Library

Room Layout & Capacity

Room layouts can be customized to best suit the needs of each booking. Please list adjustment requests on the booking form. The Visualization Classroom provides access to the same technology in a more traditional classroom setting.

360° Tour

University of the Sunshine Coast presents

The University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) in Queensland, Australia is a cutting edge post-secondary institution with impressive visual learning spaces that support shared learning and exploration for both students and faculty. USC's Mark Berry expressed an interest in seeing Mount Royal's own immersive learning spaces such as the Experience Lab, Visualization Classroom, Immersion Studio, and Ideas Lounge. We were honoured to welcome Mr. Berry to campus on August 21, 2018 while he was in Alberta conducting research in the Canadian Rockies with Earth and Environmental Science Professor Lynn Moorman. Mr. Berry created  a dynamic multimedia presentation on the USC visualization spaces, which included their features and the thought and consideration that went into their design.  He was a natural presenting on the interactive high resolution Visualization Wall while answering questions from staff and faculty in attendance.

MRU Kids get artistic with the visualization wall

The best way to see the potential of evolving technology is to put it in the hands of a child.  The Ideas Lounge became one of many daily activity zones for MRU Kids camps that take over campus during the summer months. Furniture in this space was moved out to create three distinct discovery areas for the children whose ages ranged from 5-14. Virtual Reality was easily incorporated through a station that had students use Occulus Rifts to play in a number of virtual experiences. Google Cardboards were the star of a second area that allowed the children and their supervisors to use various apps to engage with VR and easily engage with each other. The Visualization Wall was the ideal large scale format of a shared art canvas. The junior students took turns to use the multi touch display to draw, colour, and take advantage of the digital process to easily wipe away a creation and start anew.

Minister Hoffman announces changes to provincial health

The Government of Alberta chose the Mount Royal University Ideas Lounge to make a historic nursing announcement on November 23, 2018. Sara Hoffman, Minister of Health, Deputy Premier and MLA for Edmonton Glenora announced new regulations that expand the scope of practice for registered nurses and nurse practitioners. Students, faculty and staff, along with multiple media outlets and members of the Calgary community filled out this space that allowed the Minister to share news that frontline health-care professionals will now be able to prescribe drugs in places like travel clinics, sexually transmitted infection programs and workplace health and safety clinics. The School of Nursing and Midwifery provided fantastic high-resolution images, which our in-room team weaved into a bright and branded backdrop for the news release.

Faculty presents research findings with a talk

Professor Emerita, Margy MacMillan is currently a Senior Researcher with Project Information Literacy on their latest study "How Students Engage with News". The former MRU Librarian hosted a special presentation in the Ideas Lounge on November 2, 2018 where she presented findings from the study that surveyed over 5,800 students across 11 U.S. institutions about where they encountered news, what tools they used, what topics they followed and shared, and the role of news in their lives. It also asked specifically about the differences between their personal and academic news habits. The results were fascinating, and countered popular narratives of disengaged 'newsless' youth; on the contrary, following the news takes effort and time, and while many of the participants have developed effective strategies for managing the glut of information, others feel overwhelmed.

Build community through gaming

While campus quiets over the spring and summer months, programming throughout the Library adjusts to accommodate the reduced class schedule. During the summer 2018, Video Game Fridays was a weekly retreat for Mount Royal students, faculty, staff and members of the Calgary community to drop in to the Ideas Lounge and enjoy a friendly yet competitive game of Mario Kart. This became a retreat for many over the lunch hour and even allowed visitors from a wide age range, variety of backgrounds and positions to connect over a popular video game. For many, taking part in a gaming session was their first time in the Ideas Lounge, which allowed us to inform potential users on the equipment and capabilities in the space.