The University of Queensland is spending $3.9 million on upgrading AV equipment in lecture theatres across the University.
The AV lecture theatre upgrade project, run by UQ’s Information Technology Services (ITS), will refresh equipment in 84 rooms across four campuses.
“UQ is committed to providing modern, technologically advanced campuses for our students and staff,” said Rob Moffatt, Director of ITS.
“Audio Visual upgrades to lecture theatres are an important part of our commitment to learning, discovery and engagement,” he said.
Upgrades include a refresh to lecture theatre computing equipment, visualisation systems, audio systems and lecterns. HD document cameras will replace older OHPs, colour touch panels will be introduced for lecterns and the entire AV system will be digitised.
The digitisation compliments other current ITS projects that include the introduction of digital streaming of lecture content and lecture theatre wireless upgrades.
“The project coincides with a change in technology in the AV industry,” said Michael Livingstone, manager of the AV project in ITS.
“This change, aka digitisation, condenses and integrates many of the previous products that we used. We’re finding we have to purchase less for the same result and are also making a significant saving in time during installation,” he said.
ITS will use the savings to fund an additional phase of the project in 2013, which will focus on giving UQ teaching spaces added functionality, for example, rolling out more lecture recording systems, adding dual projection to larger spaces and upgrading new smaller rooms.
Lecture theatres will be offline for approximately one week each during upgrade.
“We couldn’t do this without the support of Teaching Space Management, who help reschedule classes, the Infrastructure Subcommittee, who are funding it, and the patience of the teaching staff and students at UQ,” said Mr Livingstone.
“It takes three days to perform physical installations and another two to install software, align systems and perform quality control. We’ve got a team of eight working as hard as we can to get this done as fast as possible. The results are worth it,” he said.
The project has divided lecture theatres into three staged groups. The first and second groups of lecture theatres have now been upgraded. Group three will start in October and will be completed at the end of December.
To view the rooms that are receiving upgrades, please click here
More information:Nick Manning, n.manning@uq.edu.au
