The education sector has seen tremendous growth from an AV and IT perspective in the past few years, both with and without COVID’s influence. Sean Carroll finds out what’s happening on this side of the AV industry.

In Stand and Deliver (1988), a mathematics teacher, Jamie Escalante, portrayed by Edward James Olmos, starts working at an underperforming school in East Los Angeles. It’s a wonderful story about the importance of teaching, engagement and a desire to learn. Unfortunately, in the 80s, Mr. Escalante can only do what the title suggests, stand and deliver his information.

If the film were to be remade in a modern setting, “Rocky of the Classroom”, as it was dubbed, might be due for a major facelift.

The education sector has seen huge growth, in line with the AV industry. For years now, integrators have been encroaching on the classroom and lecture theatres. Educational institutions, from kindergarten through to university and TAFE, are rolling the CRT TVs out and bringing in high-end collaboration tools.

Education is transforming, educators are evolving and there’s no turning back.

Universities are at the forefront of the technological revolution as they have the largest funding and resources, but K-12 and TAFE markets are starting to raise their hands for recognition.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire industry was forced online and the role of IT and AV professionals at educational institutions was on full display. Primary and secondary school students had to learn from home, and at universities lecture capture went from a neat cherry on top to a necessity.

We’re far enough away from the pandemic (and into the ‘new normal’) that society is back to a near-full capacity. Coming out of lockdown, the industry hasn’t expected everyone to return to their pre-COVID lifestyles, and paralleling changes in the way we work, universities and TAFEs understand and even encourage hybrid setups.

The first post-COVID in-person event for the integration industry was the Integrate + Security Expo in late 2022. Face-to-face for the first time in a long time, the Association for AV & Education Technology Management (AETM) introduced ‘hyflex’ learning to attendees, the education industry’s response to hybrid work environments.

Hyflex learning is a portmanteau of hybrid and flexible and it describes a learning setting where students can attend in their own time and where they like, whether that be on campus or remotely.

A year on from that introduction, AETM president and Swinburne University of Technology AV manager Scott Doyle says educational institutions have explored different answers: “I think every university pivoted in a different direction during COVID and have either kept that direction or pivoted again. It also makes a difference if you’re a regional university or a capital city university.

“Before the pandemic, universities were placing their capital expenditure on infrastructure to attract students to their campus, and it was a key marketing tool for higher enrolments. It was saying: ‘Come to our campus, look at the facilities, have the student engagement and have the stereotypical student experience’. That’s no longer the case.”

Scott acknowledges that it’s a slow process because universities have spent the past 15 years trying to get more students on campus. Swinburne University is an example of one university that’s happy providing hyflex classrooms since that flexibility is what’s driving enrolments.

University of Queensland (UQ) chief information officer Rowan Salt opened the AETM 2023 Conference by talking about the investment that the university has made in the AV and IT space. He started the presentation by saying that when the pandemic hit, he didn’t think that they were going to be learning from home for long, admitting he was very wrong.

Since the pandemic, UQ’s number of AV spaces has grown by about 500 and the university is now focused on offering rich technology experiences for all students while giving students the flexibility to work on campus, remotely or in a hybrid environment.

Scott says that the AV industry is allowing students to not go to class due to circumstances like wasting time travelling and working shift work. It’s not that hybrid is the ‘easy’ outcome, as the stigma might’ve been before COVID-19.

Hyflex doesn’t mean lecture capture. That doesn’t cut it. Integrators and AV professionals have a plethora of solutions available to and targeted towards learning environments. The end goal of hyflex is to make the remote learner feel just as engaged with the class as an in-person student and the only way to do that is with technology.

Lights, camera… more cameras, action

Scott says that the latest and greatest revolution in education AV is happening in the camera space. This is likely because cameras play such a large role in providing a dynamic experience for remote learners.

Several companies who operate in the education space are releasing multi-camera setups that follow speakers around the room, zoom into talking participants and even highlight those talking while learning remotely.

“There are multi-camera setups that suspend from the ceiling, looking in all directions, or a single 360° camera in the middle of the space that captures all those involved,” Scott says.

“And then moving on from the placement of the cameras, there are solutions that use AI to square up the faces and make it look like people are sitting in a meeting on Zoom or Teams when it’s actually a larger camera looking at a room from a distance.”

For the person at home, they’re not just watching a lecture capture that sits still. There’s the option for a meeting-style setup with multiple faces or even a zoomed-out perspective that can zone in on whoever’s talking, be it a teacher or student. There are also ways to engage with a whiteboard remotely, letting changes come up for the in-person students as the remote student manipulates it.

MadisonAV brought its range of PTZOptics solutions to the AETM 2023 Conference as its broadcasting solutions are seeing use in education settings.

“PTZOptics has rationalised its range down to a core set of products including a 1080p camera, a 4K camera and then a 4K camera with Dante built into it,” MadisonAV product line manager Rob Mayer explains.

“These products have the full range of output cables including USB, HDMI, SDI and so on, all contained within the unit. Also, it comes with built-in presenter tracking. This tracking is based on the person’s face, not their body, so it’s perfect for education settings where there may be lots of people on the screen at once.”

The PTZOptics solution is made to be set and forgotten about, educators or integrators don’t need to come in and calibrate the product before each use. The end users will reap the benefits of the automatic camera zoom.

Another solution for hybrid learning is a meeting board. Typically used in a meeting room space, a meeting board could also act as a way to further include remote participants in a teaching environment.

Yealink’s MeetingBoard for Microsoft Teams on Android is one solution that has been used in an educational setting. Leader Computers national UC technology and vendor manager Scott Young was on the Yealink stand at the AETM 2023 Conference and he said that the MeetingBoard solution was a hit with those in the education space: “Being able to move the board around brings excellent flexibility to education, just as it does to commercial settings.

“The MeetingBoard can be used for a traditional meeting in one room, then moved into a classroom to display the remote learners and then used as a digital whiteboard for a smaller group later on.”

This parallels a point UQ’s Rowan Salt made when introducing the university. He said that the university is happy to give free rooms to students in their spare time if they want an AV room for collaboration and learning. Portable meeting boards add another level of technology to the spaces for the students to make the most of.

“Yealink’s MeetingBoard can run on a ‘borrowed mode’ which limits some of the features but works fine as a digital whiteboard, while also supporting Zoom and MS Teams calls,” Scott added.

These trends are similar to evolutions in the commercial space. As meeting room technology evolves, a lot of the innovations help the education space as well.

“If the cameras can zoom in close enough and provide a high enough quality so that you can see their lips move, the attendee will feel connected to the conversation, not just a remote participant,” Scott says.

“That engagement is the same engagement that integrators are talking about in commercial meeting spaces.”

Is this seat taken?

It’s all fine and dandy to install these camera solutions but it’s not always plug-and-play. At the AETM K-12 Conference during Integrate 2023, Flinders University senior IDS technical lead Leigh Hoppenbrouwers delivered a session on decentralising the teaching point.

Leigh detailed his team’s journey in finding out the best way to design teaching rooms. There’s obviously the stand-and-deliver model and heavily disputed open-floor plans, but what else is out there?

After researching the topic, Flinders University found that the best method of teaching was letting the educator walk freely around the space. While technology certainly plays a part in enabling this, the most important element was furniture. By breaking students up into smaller groups around the room, each with their own screen, the educator can walk around the room as they please and know that every student can view the video/displayed content and hear them correctly. After learning this, the AV team at Flinders University set up some rooms accordingly.

Another important element is making sure that the furniture is comfortable. Leigh said that when he sat on the traditional seating arrangements, the chairs just weren’t made for long-term seating. While it’s completely out of the technology realm, having comfortable seating goes a long way in making the entire learning experience enjoyable.

The Big Picture director Mark Skehan also talked about furniture and screen placement at the AETM K-12 Conference. When discussing some of his case studies in the education space, Mark emphasised the importance of flexible spaces that are ready for upgrades.

He had one high school that was happy placing screens around the room for students to access but wanted the screens fitting snugly in a carved-out space. While this looks great on day one, it’s important to note that we don’t know what the next solution is going to look like. Where possible, leave as much room as possible.

These learning spaces are evolving a lot, especially as technology grows. It’s important to make sure that you’re not locking yourself into one hardware iteration.

The elephant in the classroom

As with the entire AV industry, the supply chain issues that were augmented by the pandemic are hurting progress. This area appears to be on an upward trajectory with positive signs coming from the industry, but large-scale orders can still be delayed for more than 12 months at a time.

InSight Systems director of technology and Connected contributor, Myke Ireland, expressed his frustrations at Integrate 2022: “There’s just not enough stock. We might roll out seven rooms in a university one month but by the time the stock comes, it may be two hardware iterations old, and you can’t create a standard of work that way.”

Scott says that university AV managers work the same as integrators, with pre-planned technology, three-to-five-year strategies and life-cycle expectations. One solution is to bake those expected delays into the strategy, as unfortunate as it is.

“An example from my experience at Swinburne is that we purchased equipment for 120 rooms in 2022 and we’ll see that technology in 2024,” he says.

“An exciting part about the supply chain issues is that it’s forced a lot of people to think outside the box and look outside people’s standard technology. Universities tend to lock themselves into products A, B and C and call it a day. But with the supply chain disruptions, they’re now considering product D if it can come sooner.”

James Cook University (JCU) AV technician Mark Clarkson says that his job has involved more problem-solving since 2020. While parcels may not be at the door, students are, and the AV needs to work regardless of the supply chain.

Part of this problem-solving led JCU to cut down on rooms and repurpose parts into different spaces.

“We’re looking at cutting down on space. Instead of having 50 rooms used 70% of the time, we have 40 rooms used 85% of the time. We’re going to these little-used rooms, taking out the equipment and moving it around,” he says.

He talks about one room that went from a seldom-used conferencing room to a teaching room in a couple of days. The JCU team moved several 65” monitors to the south of the room with a video codec and rack and then rotated everything 90° so it could fit 16 people instead of ten.

“It wasn’t necessarily a neat room, but it got the job done and was very cost effective. As of late, we’ve had a lot of areas that need to be turned into ad hoc teaching rooms until we get the supply, we need to fit out new spaces,” Mark explains.

Scott says that problem-solving used to be a much bigger part of classroom AV so a lot of integrators are used to it: “Classroom solutions were about connecting ten boxes together to get into a project to work. We’re getting back into old-school AV and possibly learning things along the way while also saving money.”

The Association

Founded in 2001, the AETM was designed to give Victorian-based AV managers a forum to talk and share ideas about their industry. Now reaching across the entire country, New Zealand and parts of the Asia Pacific region, the AETM hosts its own conference as well as the mini-conference at Integrate and discusses all forms of education, not just universities.

When asked about what the association does for its members, Scott immediately responds with the connections it gives its members: “I think what really shone through last year was how much we all stayed connected through the pandemic. We all kept in contact digitally but as soon as we all got back together in person, the conversations and discussions went even further.”

At Integrate 2023, the strength of the AETM was on full display. Wearing the AETM polos (or “purple people eater” shirts), members walked around the show floor and helped each other break down solutions, learn about new technologies and bounce ideas off each other in real-time.

“There’s a lot more chatter on our community forum as more members join and especially after meeting back up face-to-face again, it feels like we’re all back together, we’re all in the same boat, facing similar challenges now and can tackle them together,” Scott says.

“That networking, camaraderie and support for each other are some of the key benefits of the AETM.”

Mark says that since joining the association, it has been great to be close to such a rich source of industry know-how. He remembers countless times he couldn’t figure out an issue, picked up his phone and called another AETM member to find a workable solution.

“The big thing with the AETM is that we all get together, swap ideas and find out what’s working for each other, regardless of if they’re a big university or just a smaller organisation. Nobody’s keeping anything from anyone else,” Mark says.

“Over the years, I’ve grown a great collection of contacts, and it has been nice to call up a ‘John Smith’ from time to time, knowing that it’s their area of expertise. It’s a great, tight-knit community.”

 

The AV and Education Technology Management (AETM) Association is a member-based, industry-representative body, fostering thought, theory, research and professional standards in the fields of learning and teaching technology and their integration and related fields. To find out more, visit AETM.org or contact them at [email protected] and +61 3 9989 4233.