Page 29 - Campus Technology, April/May 2017

AV TRENDS
“We want to give people the flexibility to move around the furniture and rearrange things. We can’t assume that they’re going to be sitting with nicely dimmed lights to see the projection screen.
—Dave Test, Penn State
of the acoustic, echo cancellation and audio mixing of those micro- phones, so everybody in the room can be easily heard on the far end,” he explained. “That’s sometimes a little bit of a shock to clients. They just think, ‘Well, we can throw a web- cam in there and we’re good to go.’”
to Zoom, it’s just another webcam and microphone that’s being connected. But to us it’s high-quality audio and video being converted,” said Tomei.
Finding Your Balance
Those immersed in AV in higher ed walk a fine line in attempt- ing to figure out whether the introduction of new types of technology will boost student learning in the classroom or present a learning curve so steep that it’s going to take away from the faculty’s time. “Balancing that is something that we take seriously,” said Test. To avoid heading over the abyss, Penn State tests its products and services by setting them up for amenable faculty willing to run a pilot.
That practice has come from hard experience, he admit- ted. “When we put in interactive boards, we found that people didn’t use them. They already had a whiteboard or chalkboard and they already had a presentation surface. Keeping them at the front of the room and reinforcing that lecture dynamic wasn’t really helpful to them,” Test recalled. “When we transitioned to the tools that helped them democ- ratize the room a bit and have them be a partner in the learn- ing process with the students, then we’ve had a much bet- ter embracing of that, and the students seem to respond positively to it as well”
Dian Schaffhauser is a senior contributing editor for Campus Technology.
5) Audio Gets Simpler
One tricky aspect of collaboration is audio. As Salt Lake CC’s Shirkey pointed out, when you have groups all doing a project and shuffling their displays among various screens in the room, there’s no problem. “But you can’t have five different audio tracks playing at the same time. You have to make decisions about how you’re going to limit audio for each of the groups.” Otherwise, the class will become a cacophony of sound.
To address the problem, the flex classrooms use a single set of speakers, embedded in the ceilings and controlled by an Extron switcher. A touch panel that enables instructors to con- trol all the technology from a single location also lets them specify who the “primary audio” is. “You can mix and match as you want,” Shirkey said.
Tomei’s concern for the schools where he consults is mak- ing sure the audio is heard from throughout the classroom, especially by those who are attending remotely. “A lot of what I do is explain why I’m putting in multiple microphones con- nected to a digital sound processor that’s going to handle all
Luckily, he added, a lot of companies are coming out with USB microphones and cameras that are on a “more profes- sional level than those little webcams you’re going to buy at Staples.” While those are useful for “huddle spaces or small classrooms,” in larger rooms he’ll recommend a “pretty con- ventional microphone design” that uses multiple ceiling microphones to pick up students’ voices or table micro- phones if there are fixed tables in the room. Plus, he’ll also suggest wireless mics such as the kind seen in lecture halls.
Whatever those choices are, the piece that “ties it all together” is the use of digital sound processors, which handle echo cancellation and audio mixing to deliver high- quality audio.
Also, Tomei will turn to devices such as Vaddio’s EasyUSB AudioBRIDGE, which converts HDMI video and analog audio to a USB connection for web conferencing. Cur- rently, a “lot of companies” are getting into that market, making sure that their devices are recognized by all the major web conferencing software packages. “Really,
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | April/May 2017
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