What AVoverIPPro has learnt about Higher Education and Active Learning

The idea of Active Learning – especially in the Higher Education sector – is not a new one. However its relevance today is more significant than ever. The ability to engage students more fully in the educational experience by connecting them more attentively with their chosen subjects and inspiring dialogue and interaction using technology as its core is of particular appeal to today’s students. That at least is the premise.  

Practically however, its effective adoption has been hampered by numerous factors – some perceived, some not. The presence of outdated systems, apparent costs, unawareness of and/or reticence to accept new technologies, amongst others have all played their part in this.  

Yet with the availability of progressive technologies like AVoIP and the streaming of uncompressed video today, there really is no reason for this not to remedied.

But despite all the reservations, there have been successes.  AVoverIPPro’s experience has shown that increasingly, Universities and other institutions are being won over by the powerful AVoIP arguments that promote very the real gains of cost-of-ownership, scalability, ease-of-use, ease-of-deployment and flexibility. This allows these institutions to have a longer reach, larger audiences, faster and easier maintenance (thanks to centralized monitoring & management) and substantial space and cost savings compared to traditional video switching methods.

This has resulted in a steady AV revolution to AVoIP that stimulates many areas of the campus – learning spaces, student collaboration, connectivity, virtual classrooms, interactive learning and digital signage – to name a few. 

Why Active Learning and Collaboration?

The common thread that runs through almost every  engagement with any University or College IT and AV team in consultative discussions, is  they have been burdened by department heads on how they can leverage technology to offer students (and more importantly, potential students) more than other similar institutions can. Their funding after all is dependent on student numbers.

And the current trend in creating the best and most attractive learning experience for digital-savvy students is through Active learning, with, ideally, a strong collaborative element.  Put simply, these institutions want to create environments whereby students become more directly involved with their own educational development – in effect, providing a larger component of student empowerment. The technology required in these learning and teaching spaces needs to actively cater for collaboration, for interaction and for greater student autonomy.

In the higher education space, collaborative learning is seen as playing a decisive role in the overall development of students. The collaborative approach to learning is seen as providing students with a greater range of skills – including the more elusive ‘soft-skills’ – all round abilities that ultimately prepare them better for the workplace.

When collaborative learning is introduced into higher education, it demands that students become  ‘active’ rather than ‘passive’ instructor-led learners, helping to develop those all-important range of skills, as this interactive learning focuses on the student’s personal experience of the curriculum, rather than the lecturer’s presentation of it.

Peer-to-peer engagement is promoted with emphasis on group activities, and across all levels of education, the right technology encourages group working and self-assessment that is a driver for towards a shift in making learning more project-based and student-led.

In this light, technology plays a critical role.

So how did AVoverIP systems help?

AVoIP systems help to facilitate these requirements – and more. The flexibility and scalability of the video distribution system that works behind the scenes to enable this type of environment is critical.

Traditional video distribution systems like matrix switchers were just not designed to offer this type of functionality, and  AVoIP installations in these establishments to replace these is testament to that.

Not only do matrix switchers not have in-built features such as video-walls or Multiview, (standard features on good AVoIP systems) but if the institutions continued using this fixed-format approach to video-distribution, the facilities would have to upgrade to much larger matrices, which would not only be much more expensive, but in time, also reach their capacity.  Added to this, traditional switching systems also require the use of HDMI to CAT extenders which means even more hardware cluttering the system…and of course further expense.

Prior to the upgrade to AVoIP systems, Universities reported that these legacy systems had become unstable and unreliable. System reboots of the equipment in the mornings was commonplace in order to get things working, with functionality being totally unpredictable; images disappearing suddenly in mid-lecture, and system reboots needed to bring the system back online.

Simply, the ability for Universities to change and adapt to new technologies is disadvantaged using legacy AV systems where dedicated hardware performs only specific functions – in contrast to AVoIP systems which facilitate the easy adoption of new tools and offer state-of-art software allowing for new features to become available as they can easily be added to the system through software updates, with no impact on existing hardware or cabling – all with minimal expense. 

Undoubtedly, AVoIP solutions were the best fit in all these cases.

What does a University AVoIP system look like?

Practically speaking, there is no template for University and College Active learning spaces.

Each institution’s requirements differ to varying degrees, but typically, depending on size and use-case, these are more than likely to include a combination of large main display for whole class use, then multiple smaller displays for group working, (many of which may provide touch interactivity) together with desk-mounted encoders for student input of their laptops for work sharing, together with mobile devices for individual use.

But it’s not just about the classrooms. Other campus requirements also have to be fulfilled.

The University’s needs to enhance and enrich the functionality of their auditoriums and large capacity lecture theatres also need to be addressed. These spaces have varied anywhere from 50 to 500 seater capacities, and typically feature laser projection systems (some High-Definition, others 4K) that need to display images from sources located locally or from other areas, or even act as overspill areas receiving streams from anywhere within the campus, and display this content on wall mounted, or even inventive ceiling mounted repeater screens – together of course with the need to support a wide array of input devices.

Board rooms also have their particular demands. Large 75” (or larger) screens are often installed here, and are required to receive and display richly detailed content from numerous sources. Images from any number of different Video Conferencing codecs need to be sent and received to and from the boardrooms, along with requests in these rooms (not to mention elsewhere in the campus) that the AV devices display the university’s logo and colour scheme when not in use.

Social spaces including reception areas, café’s, break-out zones, information points, and general open spaces where students and faculty can sit to study and socialise typically will have a network of digital signage screes spread across these areas, together with one or more video-walls displaying content from managed content servers to keep everyone informed and up to date.

Looking further into classroom use, newer buildings in campuses are usually designed with the creation of a multi-purpose facility in mind – so classrooms that can easily adapt to any size requirements – for instance, from a class of 20 to a class of 50 students – quickly. But, its more than just class sizes that differ – the classroom function also varies.

Some of these rooms can have as many as a dozen different instructors using them over the course of a term, and they can be all from different fields – Maths, Physics, or Psychology, whatever the discipline, each has its own particular needs. These “Intuitive multi-purpose teaching spaces” require flexible and fully adaptable AV systems to function effortlessly, and  AVoIP systems have provided lecturers with that very flexiblity, enabling them to leverage the technology to cater for these different room layouts and conditions.

Default layouts and settings are available to facilitate the adoption to any of these situations – typical example is when a large number of students need to attend the same lecture and so the seamless connection of two classrooms is needed for the presentation of the same lecture simultaneously to a number of screens without any latency from the displays or audio feeds.

In every case however, there was common denominator – management. Central management of the whole AV distribution system was a must, allowing for control from any location – either local or remote – with integration necessary to any of the Universities preferred control systems.

The AVoverIPPro Answer

 AVoIP solutions using Ethernet based transport technologies have been selected to satisfy these wide-ranging requirements.

Whether its 10Gb  based systems sending latency-free, uncompressed signals across the network, or JPEG2000 encoding systems for transport over a 1Gb network, or even an  H.264 system for Full HD requirements – or a combination of any of them – these systems have been used to underpin the integration for a unified AV connectivity between all spaces. 

These systems provide ultra-low latency (30µs – 25ms) from source to screen and support up to full 4K and Ultra HD resolutions and HDMI 2.0 devices with HDCP2.2. The platform offers multi-format encoders to cater for multiple input types, in addition to enabling seamless switching between any resolution source, as well as supporting compressed and uncompressed lossless multichannel audio formats, including Dolby Atmos, and Dante amongst others.

Video wall and also Multiview functionality is built-in to the system as standard, as well the devices having powerful integrated scalers to automatically adjust the picture to fit any screen or LED wall.

Any of these systems can scale to any size, accommodating small classroom installs of a handful of encoder/decoder units to an estate-wide installation of many hundreds of devices – providing secure, powerful and scalable 4K signal routing throughout the campus, while at the same time increasing quality and reliability of the installation.

The complete AV environment is centrally monitored, managed and controlled using powerful central Management Server platforms. Providing real-time information on equipment and status, any issues can be are instantly highlighted to the AV or IT administrators for quick resolution.

The platform also features auto-discover and easy configuration capabilities for new devices when added to the network, allowing for easy expansion and moves and changes of the AV system, together with full API integration into any existing control system. Maximum system uptime is also guaranteed, with the Zyper Management Server’s unique in the industry dual-redundancy offering – a twin server environment featuring  discreet, automatic failover capability.   

A lesson in AVoIP

AVoverIPProhas been using  forward thinking AVoIP systems to deliver diverse and inventive projects in the education sector for over 6 years now, achieving these landmark installs by working in close partnership with the designers, integrators and the University’s direct AV, IT and management departments.

These teams have utilised AVoverIPPro’ deep understanding of AVoIP to the benefit of the Universities, applying this extensive experience to the design, implementation and configuration of all network centric devices to optimise AV performance whilst complying to the security requirements of the University’s IT network.

This has resulted in technology-rich institutions with innovative learning and social spaces, with each one being at the forefront of modern learning environments.