See and hear : the journal on audio-visual learning (1945)

A-V Goes to Old Eli Center Used in 11 Fields YALE UNIVERSITY— one of America's greatest— has thrown its hat into the audio-visual circle with the opening of a new Audio-Visual Center, set up to test the use of recordings and visual materials in collegelevel courses. Launching the project as an experimental "service station" for faculty members wishing to supplement their lecture and discussion periods with recordings, slides, filmstrips and motion pictures, Yale has gone "all out" to use the most advanced techniques for bringing the voices of men and the pictures of events into the university classroom. Once thought of as a strictly primary-intermediate grade teaching tool, audio-visual education has entered the fields of business, public welfare and even national and international defense by showing the right roads to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now, at last, the nation's institutions of higher education are beginning not only to recognize and approve this new medium, but actually to do something to bring it into their own use. Three Classrooms Have Projection Booths Already taking advantage of the ultra-modern Yale Center are instructors in eleven different fields to which audio-visual education is most easily adaptable, including the humanities, social sciences, religion and the fine arts. The center is set up to service and operate all equip ment with the aid of several undergraduates working under the Yale bursary system. It has its own darkroom and makes some slides for projection, in addition to ordering motion pictures and other materials. A preview room and a complete file of audio-visual materials is being maintained in the library to allow instructors to review the films and recordings prior to the class meeting so that they can make proper selection of materials. For effective operation, Yale has equipped three of its modern classrooms with projection booths, recording machines, screens and special controls for light and ventilation. New projection devices enable an instructor to write Yale Officials vttw apparatus: (I to r) Prof. S. M. Crosby, director; J. T. Babb, librarian; E. S. Furniss, provost; E. H. Kane, director's assistant. his "blackboard" notes on a slip of celluloid and then have them projected clearly and greatly magnified on the screen. The Yale cartographer in the University map room furthers the use of A-V aids by making projection maps, charts and illustrations which are kept upto-date with changing local, national and international events, an accomplishment imf)ossible through the use of textbooks alone. Soundproof booths keep projection noises out of the classroom and an intercommunication system enables an instructor to talk to a motion picture operator quietly and clearly so that it will not interrupt the class during the showing. By joining forces with the colleges and universities throughout the country already engaged in extensive audio-visual teaching activities, Yale University has taken a major step in spreading the value of this medium to the university-level student and professor, thus furthering the scopes of learning now available. History of Art Chairman Directs Center Prof. Sumner McKnight Crosby, Chairman of the History of Art Department, is Director of the Yale Audio-Visual Center. A graduate student in the Department of Education, Elliot H. Kane, is Assistant. Members of the Yale AudioVisual Center Committee are: Provost Edgar S. Furniss; John L. Brooks, Assistant Professor of Zoology; Edward C. Cole, Associate Professor and Production Manager of the Yale Department of Drama; Albert G. Conrad, Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering; Frederick G. Kilgour. Librarian of the Yale School of Medicine; Thomas C. Mendenhall, II, Associate Professor of History and Master of Berkeley College, and Mark A. May, Director of the Institute of Human Relations. Donald C. Gallup, Assistant Professor of Bibliography, hears his lecture on the dual-connected tape and disc recorder. Classroom Booths contain projectors, a control box with an intercommunicating system and a glassed-in area.