Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1472963
CASE STUDY: NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY, UK From Concept to Completion in Three Months AV over IP Connects 110 Smart AV Stands on Three Campuses Nottingham Trent University (NTU), a public research university in Nottingham, UK, traces its beginning to the founding of the Nottingham Government School of Design in 1843, which is still a part of the university's City Centre campus. It is the ninth largest university in the UK with over 33,000 students at five campuses. The university was already making plans to subdivide and repurpose existing classrooms and offices in its City Center and Clifton campuses — combined student population 26,000 — to create 40 new learning spaces for more students. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the UK in early 2020. The reduced room capacity that came with social distancing made the need for more space even more acute. As is the case with all modern institutions, instructors at NTU rely on classroom audiovisual (AV) technology for lecture delivery. With rapidly changing government guidance regarding COVID-19 social distancing and the need to adopt new teaching styles, the AV systems designed for the new teaching spaces had to be flexible to support changing room arrangements and to scale AV deployment as needed. In some large teaching spaces, socially distanced students are too far from the main AV screens to see clearly. In other cases, students are in adjacent overflow rooms with no direct view of the instructor or the main AV screens. To meet the challenges presented by these issues, Graeme Bagley, teaching space designer in the university's Digital Technologies department, envisioned a stand-type system with a large flat panel display. The AV smart stands would have a permanent look and be easy to relocate. Furthermore, the stands would feature "smart" network interfacing and auto-configuration when moved to a different network drop, allowing non-technical people to connect the stands to new network drops without any help from IT tech support. Bagley worked with a local full-service AV integration contractor plus local and international fabricators and equipment suppliers to design, build, and commission a custom solution. When students returned after the Summer 2020 break, 110 smart AV stands were ready for teaching across three campuses within a compressed schedule of just three months. COVER ARTICLE By Anthony Cortes July/August/September 2022 I 7