Campus DVD Players Are Becoming Extinct

The DVD players have been removed from classrooms on campus this semester. The university has begun investing in higher-end technology, replacing as many classrooms as possible.

“By the end of the spring semester, we will phase in another 30 state of the art classroom projection/smart board systems to add to the already 75 that are fully operational,” said Michael Fevola, director of Information Technology/Audio Visual. Each system is completely Wireless.

Many students believe this is a huge upgrade for the campus. Jennifer Coley, a senior broadcasting major, is one of them. “It’s always great to see upgrades done in classrooms. It just has this warmth and coziness. We all love new things and being in a classroom with an upgraded system like room 119 in Humanities is great.”

Some professors who use DVDs in their classes disagree. They are worried that they may have to bring in their own DVD players or purchase one in the Browse store in Hillwood Commons.

Faculty members in the Communications and Film department use all sorts of media in classrooms regularly. Many of the faculty members coming into the fall semester were not notified that the DVD players had been removed from classrooms.

“While DVDs may be ‘old’ technology, there is much valuable material that is available only in this form, therefore the department hurried to buy DVD players for the faculty,” said Dr. Barbara Fowles, chairperson of the department of communications and film.

Her department bought DVD players from the Browse store and is making them available to faculty in the department as well as professors from other departments teaching in Humanities.

According to Fevola, the Information Technology Department is actively teaching professors who may not know how to convert DVDs to their hard drives, flash drives or store them in their cloud. He added that the ITRC reports that most professors are eager to learn how to best use the state of the art systems that the university is installing in classrooms.