Future Learning

MAP TABLE

A number of rooms have a Map Table. Students and teachers can set up demonstrations at defined locations on the table. Press the appropriate button and the teacher can share the demonstration to the room via an overhead camera — like a document camera on steroids.

DROP DOWN OCTAGON

The eight screens plus the rigging amount to some 1.5 tonnes of display. They will drop to the floor at the push of a button for servicing purposes. Push the button again and it returns to it original recessed position — great design and engineering.

SPLIT ALLEGIANCES

Myles Fenton: The principle of the split lectern is it’s something that doesn’t invite standing behind. On one side there’s a document camera and the other side a preview monitor. The combination provides a level of continuity and comfort for those who have never taught in these new rooms. But on the flipside, being split, you need to get out from behind the lectern. Evidence suggests that simply by walking back and forth reduces anxiety in the academic, helping to slow the pace and lower the heart rate.

TOUCHDOWN!

Myles Fenton: We intentionally put the AV touchdown points in a corner of a room [pictured]. It would be an absolutely terrible spot to teach from, and that’s the point. So we put a basic portable lectern on wheels which is something the teacher can place a wireless keyboard and mouse onto and that encourages them into the room — they’re out with the students facilitating learning rather than being a ‘priest behind a pulpit’ at the front of the class.

HIP HIP ARRAY

Many teaching spaces have what Monash Uni calls a Data Wall. Smaller spaces have a 1×2 array of 98-inch NEC displays, 60-cap rooms employ a 1×3 array while 90-cap rooms extend to four wide. A Crestron multiviewer processor accommodates up to four sources. Additionally, there are four Crestron receivers behind each display to handle four discrete sources.

When the lecturer has the floor, the screens are in presentation mode. In collaborative mode the screens start to really show their flexibility.

Each quadrant can display a MoCOW source (a moving computer on wheels). There are some 186 MoCOWS in the building and they’re a means by which students can quickly wirelessly present something from a device to their group. From there the MoCOW can be shown as a source on the Data Wall. In Extended Desktop mode one computer can drive up to four of the 98-inch screens.

4K: COME CLOSER

The whole building is plumbed for 4K, featuring Crestron DM, Cisco switches and 4K displays.

Myles Fenton: 4K has its place. When we’re asking students to look at things in the micro and then in macro, in other words where we’re displaying content where you can literally put your nose up to the glass of the screen and then take three or four steps back and appreciate what’s on the whole screen…that’s where we see 4K as being relevant. For general use, the viewing distance is so close, there’s little relevance. I think Avixa did the analysis on the point at which you can appreciate all the detail of 4K, and it’s 0.8 times the height of the image — so for a metre-high screen that’s only 800mm away if you want to appreciate the detail. It’s a little counter intuitive. Most people will say they want 4K so people can stand further back, but it’s quite the opposite. Practically it means you need to keep the space in front of your 4K screens clear, so people can approach the screen and fully appreciate the detail. There’s no point packing furniture right in front of the display.

We haven’t gone for interactive screens but I can see how 4K may be useful for those applications, where you can potentially have more fluid, highly detailed annotations.

Then of course there’s the multi-view advantages of 4K. In this building we can have four students wirelessly sharing their screen to a screen — that could be four hi-def pieces of work displayed simultaneously.

GET A ROOM

It’s amazing just how much glazing there is in the new building. From almost any vantage you can see learning on show in any number of classrooms or informal spaces. If you’re still unsure whether you’ve arrived at the right room, the Monash e-solutions team has developed a nifty room booking system based on Concierge room booking hardware. If the room’s touchpanel is green, then students can amble in for any reason. When the room is timetabled for class the display illuminates blue. The only time it’s red is for scheduled staff meetings. “Let’s not have it showing red — keep out! — when there’s activity booked. After all we’re inviting students to come in,” noted Myles Fenton.

AUDIO: CONSISTENCY IS KEY

Ben Clarke heads up PAVT’s technical support department and provided specialist know-how in the audio design:

Ben Clarke: The days of a pair of plastic loudspeakers next to the screen for program and a bunch of ceiling speakers for voice are well and truly gone. 

The Learning in the Round was a big audio challenge because of its shape. The reverberant field is just going to focus all the energy back into the centre and there will be various hotspots.

I talk about the triangle of compromise, by which I mean, how much do you invest in the three key aspects of good installed sound and what will give you the best results? I’m referring to: speaker directivity, acoustic treatment and the microphone. A highly directional speaker across a broad band of frequencies won’t come cheap. Extensive acoustic treatment is pricey. Getting a high quality mic capsule as close to the source is also a challenge. The university uses Shure ULX-D wireless across the campus, so that was already settled.

The finished design uses a high-directivity device (the EAW KF394) mounted above each display in the octagonal array. Then we worked on some optimisations with Rutledge AV as the integrator to get it sounding as even as possible. 

We chose the KF394 because of the enclosure’s spaced pair of 10-inch drivers which help extend that pattern control down into the midrange where the power frequencies of speech are. As downfill we use the EAW VFR69.

The VFR69 has become somewhat like Monash Uni’s workhorse loudspeaker. It’s inexpensive but it’s a timber cabinet. And when teamed with an Ottocanali or Quattrocanali multichannel amp from Powersoft it shares a consistent sound with all the other EAW speakers on campus. The technical ace in the hole is the ‘grey box’ processing block. It means we can get an identical amplitude and phase response in those smaller learning spaces as we do in the high-spec theatres. The grey box means we can implement that filter set into the Powersoft amp natively. 

Monash Uni is determined to provide its students with the same audio and acoustic experience regardless of the space their in and EAW’s grey box allows that, even if the speaker boxes are wildly different, all without external equalisation — the integrator can simply load the preset and it will sound optimised, correct and accurate no matter what loudspeaker category is chosen for a particular room or application.

The result? Teachers are telling us the students are more engaged and more able to concentrate on the content. That’s largely because they’re experiencing less fatigue.