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GETTING TECHNICAL: THE TRADING ROOM HAS BEEN EQUIPPED WITH:
✥ 5 7 Stone U ltra Small Form Factor
PCs and 114 monitors to provide dual screens for students
✥ A further 23 high specifi cation Stone Ultra Small Form Factor PCs for the displays
✥ B loomberg, Thomson R euters E ikon and TraderE x simulation software to provide real-time trading and Global Investors portfolio management
✥ Two screens and projectors for
lecturers and teachers who want to demonstrate to students
✥ Five Large Format Displays so that students can collaborate
Sustainability at its heart The building also boasts a range of ‘green’ architectural design features including a twin skin façade which acts as an acoustic screen and allows natural ventilation, photovoltaic panels which provide 10% of the energy, and green roof areas to aid biodiversity. The business school incorporates
an elliptical four-storey structure with terracot a rainscreen cladding to its façade and an at ached two- storey teaching wing with extensive curtain walling. The lecture theatre has been designed with bi-fold walls and folding partitions, so the building can also be used as a high-specifi cation conferencing venue.
Get ing technical The lecture theatres and learning spaces at the building are also fully-fi t ed with lecture capture capability – a specifi c request from current students. “Our students and staff came to us and said
that they were always having conferences and guest lecturers
in, and these are the kind of scenarios in which they could use the lecture capture
technology,” explains Neil Davies, Technical Services Manager at Cardiff Business School. “Our technology is
hardware based – it has
the physical camera in the ceiling, a visualiser (document camera), and audio. It’s all very new and our lecturers have never really used lecture capture before, so it’s a big learning curve for them, but it is something
that will undoubtedly develop over the next few months.”
Flipped learning The school has also used its lecture capture technology to experiment with the fl ipped classroom teaching technique. Davies continues: “One of the really good uses I’ve seen is when lecturers put together previews, 10–15 minute clips of what’s coming up in next week’s lesson, or in tomorrow’s
class. Students then go into the lesson a lit le more knowledgeable. Lecturers are fi nding that they spend a good 10–15 minutes afterwards, longer than they normally would, fi elding questions, as the students have come along more prepared.”
The trade-off The whole building is impressive, but the jewel in the new centre’s crown is without doubt its trading room. Sponsored by the Welsh Government, OSTC and EUREX, the trading room provides students with the opportunity to gain practical skills required for life at the Stock Exchange. “When planning the new site, we
calculated that we needed two large lecture theatres, several seminar rooms, and a much bigger trading room – the old trading room only had 16 seats, and we’ve got 60 seats in the new building,” Neil Davies adds. “This new facility gives us a much
bet er environment, and when you design a trading room it's all about the environment. Once you create a space with multiple screens and all these diff erent focal points of information and data, it gives the students an environment that is very similar to what they could potentially be working in.” So has it been money well spent? Third
year BSc Economics, Banking & Finance student Mat hew Isherwood seems to think so: “We have live webinars with potential graduate employers through the conferencing system here. So that provides a great opportunity for students to engage with industry experts and professionals. They can fi nd out what it would be like to work for them, and at the same time ask questions about the industry and discuss the economy. “Being able to use the Bloomberg
software has given me that competitive edge. I had an interview with an investment bank recently, and I was able to talk about new data which came out that morning. The other candidates didn’t have access to that sort of information as they don’t have Bloomberg at their universities.” The new-build’s impact on the local
economy will be realised soon enough, but, just a few months after opening, the Postgraduate Teaching Centre, with its clever and innovative use of the latest technology, is already allowing University staff to experiment with new learning techniques, and is also proving popular with its students – the business leaders of tomorrow. ET
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