UK University Invests In New Lecture Technology

Edge Hill University in Omskirk, England, is to use new lecture technology from Panasonic and Panaopto.

The AV upgrade is located in the Health and Social Care faculty and is part of a £250 million plus investment in the Omskirk campus.

Three lecture theatres have been designed with complete flexibility in mind, meaning that for larger events like graduations, partition walls can be moved out to leave a 900 seat auditorium. Each has a lecture capture system which combines Panasonic AW-UE70 4K remote cameras, alongside PT-RZ670 laser projectors, 65 inch Panasonic repeater panels (TH-65LFE8) and Panopto's all-in-one video platform.

Lecturers are able to control the lecture capture using an Extron controller, which starts and stops the recording, and students are allowed to log on to the Panopto platform and re-visit any aspect of the lecture they need clarification on.

"We were concerned we'd see a drop in lecture attendance," said Don Moffatt, Media Technology Development Manager at Edge Hill University. "The reality is that the opposite is true. We have seen more students attending the lectures, we think that's because they can concentrate fully on the teaching without having to slavishly take notes.
 
"The students can focus more on what the lecturer is saying and they can use the lecture capture platform as a revision tool afterwards. The Panopto system allows them to search specific topics, and will pick these up in PowerPoint text, image tags or even the words spoken by the lecturer."
 
Elsewhere within the faculty, Panasonic remote cameras capture practical elements of the University's Operating Department Practitioner (ODP) course.

Students are required to carry out team demonstrations on everything from routine procedures to life saving CPR exercises. These are all captured using Panasonic's AW-HE2 remote cameras, and stored on the cloud-based Panopto system.
 
Kevin Henshaw, Senior Lecturer in Operating Department Practice (ODP), said: "A classic example is an exercise that I run with every student group, whereby I will attempt to touch the body of a 'patient' who is about to be shocked during CPR. It's imperative from a safety aspect that the group is aware of who is within close proximity of the patient, yet often the group is too focused on their individual roles to notice. It's far more powerful to have a video demonstration of what they did wrong, so they we can eliminate potentially life-threatening mistakes in the future."
 
Amina Salem, Third Year ODP Student, was one of the students within Kevin's exercise, and added: "We have to write up the processes that we go through, and from memory, this may be only 10 or 15 things, whereas with the ability to watch back the video, I'd probably be able to double or triple that. We all learned a lot from it and were able to discuss it afterwards as a group."

www.panasonic.com/uk/

www.panopto.com