Graduate students can geek out over unusual things. During my master’s program’s ‘immersion’ on Gonzaga’s campus this past weekend, several classmates treated a piece of instructional equipment like it was a celebrity.

This relatively-new tech does something surprising. In video presentations for the online classes, it allows instructors to look right at the camera and seem to write or draw in the air! And they look like they write backwards so the audience can read it correctly!

After hearing these distance learners try to guess how GU made the videos, I invited them over to the Institutional Design & Delivery (IDD) office in the Foley Library to meet the Light Board. A very thick piece of extra-clear glass sits in a frame, and the presenter stands behind the glass and in front of a dark fabric background. Strips of LED lighting are mounted on the glass edges. Three dimmer switches help control the brightness to get the right amount of glow on the specific areas the professor uses. As the camera records, the camera operator flips the incoming image. My classmates’ reactions shows how effective it is.

“The light board makes us feel a little more connected to the professor,” my classmate Brian Torsney said. “We’re able to see them, through the glass, engaging with the material instead of with their back turned to the camera. It makes me feel more a part of campus, even when I’m in my apartment in San Diego.”

I learned about the light board on my first day of work at the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) because it was created in the school’s machine shop as part of a senior design project. Project ideas come from many organizations that apply for the privilege of sponsoring teams through the Center for Engineering Design & Entrepreneurship (CEDE). An IDD supervisor submitted the idea for the light board after seeing one in use at a conference, so a Gonzaga undergrad team spent much of the 2016-17 academic year researching and designing this board.

That summer, the two full-time staff members of the machine shop (officially called the Manufacturing Technology Center or MTC) put the final pieces together. They steadied the frame, set up the dimmer switches, and gingerly moved it from the Herak Engineering Center to the east side of the Foley Library.  Wade Croft from the MTC said he and three other guys had quite a job mounting it — remember I said it’s a thick pane of glass? That means it’s heavy!

By the time I began working at Gonzaga, the IDD team had practiced with the light board and was letting instructors get comfortable with it. The videographers made a short video to thank everyone in the MTC and SEAS; one by one, IDD staff members wrote thank you in different languages on the light board. That silent video spoke volumes to the SEAS tech staff, who were so happy to have made something useful and appreciated.

We talk about the difference a Gonzaga education makes in developing the whole person. When these distance learners had an opportunity to meet people involved in this tool’s creation, they specifically took the opportunity, thanked them, and gave feedback on how important that light board has become to them. On the GU campus, I’ve been fortunate enough to experience this honest regard for others many times as a giver, receiver, or observer. Society could use more of this respectful attitude, and I’m grateful to be part of it as both a staff member and a graduate student.