The Paws Radio and Multi-Media Learning Lab at Cal State San Bernardino’s Palm Desert Campus has several new technology offerings for both students and faculty at the campus.

Financial support during the past two years totaling more than $18,000 from CSUSB Vital and Expanded Technologies Initiative grants and Instructionally Related Programs grants, and new partnerships with the university’s Academic Technologies and Innovation (ATI) department and their xREAL center, and the Helene A. Hixon Information Resource Center at PDC, have resulted in new, innovative technologies, funding for student positions, and additional learning opportunities for students and faculty at the Palm Desert Campus.

The Paws Radio and Multi-Media Learning Lab now includes a completely renovated broadcast facility with 24-hour programming. The learning lab now includes digital field recording equipment, 360-degree cameras, live-remote broadcast equipment, podcasting kits, mixing consoles and immersive media tools for virtual and augmented reality training.

“Our students can now engage in state-of-the-art multi-media learning and production, regardless of what discipline they are majoring in, and our new amenities will also allow us to provide developmental learning in augmented reality for our professors to help them more easily introduce it in their coursework,” said Lacey Kendall, broadcast and media consultant at CSUSB and manager of the Paws Radio and Multi-Media Learning Lab. “The pandemic lockdowns set us back for sure, but these grants and new partnerships have allowed us to reintroduce our facility with a variety of important and new experiences for our students and our faculty.”

“Immersive media is rapidly becoming an integral part of the medical, science, engineering and kinesiology fields, and this advancement is critical to the student learning experience,” said Jake Zhu, dean of the CSUSB Palm Desert Campus.

Dean Rueyling Chuang of the CSUSB College of Arts and Letters oversees the student lab.

“The addition of these new learning opportunities allows our students to be right at the forefront of innovation upon graduation and that’s immensely gratifying for a campus that seeks to put our students first in the workforce,” she said.

Saul Romero, a student tech in the lab said, “Most of our students haven’t had opportunities to explore immersive technologies, but to be able to learn it here, on our own campus, is an awesome opportunity.”

Partnering with ATI has already brought new experiential learning in motion capture animation, television camera operation, switching, and live production training for several PDC students who have driven tech demonstrations and live-streamed broadcasts of major events from the campus, including the annual “Tech Talks” event and the 2022 Student Convocation. 

“PDC is extremely important to our department and the xREAL center, and we want to provide more technical services to the students of PDC,” said James Trotter, assistant director of Academic Technologies and Innovation. “ Partnering with Paws Radio and the Multi-Media Learning Lab made that goal even more possible.”

Additional offerings scheduled for 2023 learning include Mozilla Hubs Projects, immersive-virtual travel experiences and virtual tour video production workshops.

Partnering with the Helene A. Hixon Information Resource Center on campus now allows students to learn the use of many of these new tools in the lab, and then check out the same equipment for use in their academics.

The Paws Radio and Multi-Media Learning Lab is open to all PDC students and faculty, Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and an Open House event is scheduled this fall semester.

Visit the Paws Radio website for more information.

For more information about the CSUSB Palm Desert Campus, contact Mike Singer in the Office of Strategic Communication at msinger@csusb.edu or (760) 341-2883, ext. 78107, or visit the PDC website at www.csusb.edu/pdc.