This new facility provides assistance and tutoring to students for a variety of accounting courses through the use of traditional teaching materials as well as technology-based courseware. Interdisciplinary cases are available to help students learn how to develop and communicate meaningful accounting information. The ACELAB also assists faculty in selecting and developing technology-based course materials. A small group work area includes five five-person tables with 42 inch plasma screens allowing students to collaborate on accounting and AIS software.

ACELAB Schedule

The Center for Languages and International Collaboration (CLIC) seeks to enhance course curricula in modern languages and international studies through the use of state-of-the-art technology. CLIC's Global Theater, seating up to 24 students, is designed to support international video-and computer-conferencing with faculty and students throughout the world. Two satellite dishes provide international news feeds in real-time, direct from countries of origin. Wireless headsets allow students and faculty to move about the facility as they tune in to watch international news and feature programs that are displayed through large wall-mounted flat-panel plasma screens.

When students are in the lab, they can utilize traditional tutoring rooms or the networked Tandberg Prisma Language System that provides audio and video to desktop PCs and records responses for instructor review. When students are in their dormitory rooms or off campus, they can access the online, Multi-lingual Jukebox which offers an array of streamed audio lessons for oral practice in French, Italian, and Spanish. Additionally, CLIC provides a variety of CD-ROM programs for these languages as well as Chinese and Japanese.

CLIC Schedule

An integral part of the college's Information Age Marketing programs, the Center for Marketing Technology is a "best practices" lab for exploring the technologies and activities used in marketing and advertising today. This unique instructional and research facility embodies a broad range of state-of-the-art technologies and provides a setting for the exploration of the uses of these technologies to improve decision making in marketing.

CMT Schedule

The Computing and Networking Lab is equipped with 24 student PCs and actual networking equipment. Patch panels, switches, routers, and hubs provide the opportunity for students enrolled in CIS classes real-world experience with the complexities of networked business environments.

Integrating theory and practice in human factors in information design, this state-of-the-art facility enables students to design and test user interfaces for software, hardware, and information design products. The research conducted in the Design and Usability Center helps students and corporate clients improve the usability and performance of their interface, product, and information designs.

While there are a variety of locations across campus equipped with videoconferencing technology, the crown jewel of our distance learning facilities is the Distance Education Classroom in the Smith Academic Technology Center. The Distance Education Classroom seats 45 and features two large flat-panel plasma display screens, video cameras and microphones mounted throughout the room, a rear-screen projection system, and other equipment to deliver courses and executive education programs to corporate sites. State-of-the-art technology for "video streaming" allows individuals from down the street or across the globe to participate in live videoconferences with only a personal computer and Internet connection.

For classes that require specialized software not found on student laptops, three classrooms equipped with 32 student PCs can be found in the Smith Academic Technology Center. In order to provide students with a comfortable "straight ahead" view of their PC monitors while at the same time minimizing the intrusion of 32 bulky monitors in a classroom, flat panel displays are used and mounted on custom-designed desks that lower their overall height. This enables much better faculty-student and student-student sight lines and hence class discussions.

The Trading Room brings an important hands-on dimension to education at Bentley. Housed in the David and Elizabeth Hughey Center for Financial Services, the multimillion-dollar resource features a ticker-tape display of real-time market data, and up-to-the-minute financial news from Bloomberg and Reuters. The Trading Room is an important tool that cuts across many disciplines, not only finance but accountancy, economics and computer information systems.

Trading Room Schedule