Practice Observation: East Campus Commons

     East Campus Commons or ECC is a dining hall at Bridgewater State University. I sat in an observed the dining hall last week to see what the community was like and how the use of media and technology was used. I realized that obviously people go to ECC mainly to eat, but many people finish eating with 10-15 minutes but sit around for another half hour or so chatting with their friends and other people in the dining hall. It is a place to socialize and see your friends around campus. The people are very friendly that work there. I also realized that this is the dining hall that teams usually come to eat because there are longer and bigger tables to fit everyone. The team that I observed sat there for at least thirty five minutes after they had finished eating just talking with one another.
     This particular dining hall uses technology as a way to check out people when they are buying dinner. They have a computer that automatically calculates your balance of meal swipes/ dining dollars after every meal. This makes it a lot easier for the workers and school to keep track of people's meal plans. There are also mini screens at each food station that tell the student the ingredients for each food item. This especially helps the people that have strict diets such as vegetarians or vegans. It is easy to see what they are putting in their body.
      ECC has two televisions on the right side of the dinning hall. There are a lot of long tables that people sit at with a lot of their friends or teams to watch tv. There is a different advertisement in the center of the table every day, too. From sorority meetings to different events happening on campus, there is a little flyer that will tell you the details.