Communication Practice Room
The Communication Practice Room is located in Center for Student Services 374. It provides a private space to practice giving a presentation. The room includes a podium, a flat screen TV for projecting slides, and a small dry-erase board for a chalk talk. It is also equipped to record your presentation if you wish.
Our STEM and Generalist Writing Specialists and Peer Tutors are also available to offer you feedback on your presentation (details below).
The room is available Monday - Friday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Reserve the room and arrange for feedback:
To access our scheduling platform and reserve the room, sign in to access.caltech.edu and select "Writing Center Scheduling." Log in to our scheduling system using your Caltech credentials. In order to book time in the room, locate the "Schedules" dropdown menu at the top of the page. Select "Communication Practice Room" from the drop-down menu. Once the schedule loads, choose the available date and time (white rectangles) that works best for you.
If you want to receive feedback from a writing specialist or peer tutor, you must book their time separately from the room reservation. You can either book a writing center staff member's time to coincide with your use of the room (so they can join you while you practice giving the presentation) or later on (so they can review a video with you), depending on your preference. To book a staff member's time, select "One-to-one tutorial meetings" from the drop-down menu at the top of the schedule and select a person and time. Appointments with our staff can be booked for 30 or 60 minutes.
What you'll need:
In order to utilize the room, you should bring a laptop (if you plan to project slides or record a video) and any special connectors you need to use an HDMI cable. (We do provide the most common Mac adapters.) A 3.0 speed USB drive is also needed to retrieve the video, and we provide one for your use in the room (if you don't have one).
Using the technology in the room:
We have prepared these detailed instructions to help new users utilize the Communication Practice Room technology. A copy of these instructions is also provided in the room.
