In partnership with London-based audiovisual specialist GVAV, Audiologic has furnished the University of Birmingham with hybrid teaching space supporting students’ work both in person and learning remotely off campus.

Part of the new purpose-built Teaching and Learning Building includes a 500-seat lecture theatre, a 250-seat interactive lecture theatre, ten seminar rooms, as well as individual study sections, collaborative group workspaces, and areas that accommodate break-out sessions following the university’s ‘modern learning experience’ standards.

‘The university has been looking at the use of hybrid teaching in order to support students who find themselves unable to come to campus, mainly overseas students because of the current restrictions,’ explains University of Birmingham Head of HEFE Digital, Matt Turner. ‘In the first instance, this has been a small-scale pilot, with academic colleagues who have been running sessions with students in the room and overseas on Zoom.

‘The purpose is so that students can be taught together, but also so that our academic colleagues don’t have to teach the session more than once. We are then going to use the rooms that we have got equipped in a similar way in the next academic year to further support those students who are unable to return to the campus from overseas.

‘At the heart of the multi-use space are the Shure MXA910 Beam-forming array microphones,’ Audiologic Senior Application Engineer, Ben Spurgeon, continues. ‘We’ve used the microphones for multiple purposes in Lecture Theatre One, including lecture capture, audience pickup for video conferencing and assistive listening feeds. With a theatre of this size, it was key that everyone within the space could be clearly heard by those that are now participating remotely.

‘By combining the six MXAA910s and a careful commissioning process, we managed to get fantastic coverage and performance throughout. Management of the system is looked after by a QSC Core110f audio, video and control processor, as well as handling the camera tracking data. By reading gating data from the MXA910s we are able to recall camera positions within the room to make for a more intimate experience than just viewing the whole room.’

‘By working with Audiologic from conception to completion on this project, we really do believe we have delivered a high-end space for the university,’ adds GVAV Technical Sales Manager, Stuart Harris.