Lectrum Lecture Centre at UTS

THE CHALLENGE

Until fairly recently, the formal teaching process has usually worked on the principle of diffusion, where a person of high knowledge con­cen­tra­tion (the teacher, guru, master) is placed in contact with people of low knowledge con­cen­tra­tion (the students, disciples, acolytes) and the knowledge flows into them. This tra­di­tion­al­ly takes the form of the learned person standing in front of the learners and ex­plain­ing what it is they should know, hopefully (but by no means always) in a way that can be un­der­stood. As far back as 150 years ago, humourist Mark Twain is credited with saying: “College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either”, which pretty much matches up with my rec­ol­lec­tions of Sta­tis­tics lectures.

THE PROCESS

In recent times, educators have looked more closely at the dis­con­nect between the way teaching and com­mu­ni­ca­tion takes place in class­rooms and lecture theatres, and the way it takes place in the rest of the community – and a rev­o­lu­tion has ensued. Col­lab­o­ra­tive learning has now become the preferred practice and is picking up momentum as it re­lent­less­ly sweeps previous ped­a­gog­i­cal models before it. Nowhere is this trend more obvious than in the huge new CBD fa­cil­i­ties of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy Sydney. The recently-opened Faculty of En­gi­neer­ing and IT (FEIT) building is an excellent example of this trend.
Lecture theatres in the FEIT are designed to allow lecturers to interact directly with in­di­vid­u­als and small groups. No longer are students expected to go to a hushed library or computer lab and work in silent isolation. UTS expects today’s students to gather in un­struc­tured working groups to learn together and from each other as they continue the col­lab­o­ra­tive processes begun in the scheduled sessions.

THE SOLUTION

The current UTS re­de­vel­op­ment has prompted the uni­ver­si­ty to undertake a rethink of its teaching tech­nolo­gies and its user in­ter­faces. The upshot of this was the design of a new lectern system (now referred to as the Lectrum Lecture Centre) that would not only work across all the teaching and pre­sen­ta­tion spaces in the three buildings under con­struc­tion, but also be suitable for retro­fitting into existing spaces.
Unlike the con­ven­tion­al lecture theatre arrange­ment, these tables needed to be free­stand­ing and capable of operating in the middle of a room or in a small space, well away from any sup­port­ing technical in­fra­struc­ture. The tables had not only to be far more so­phis­ti­cat­ed in their ca­pa­bil­i­ties than previous gen­er­a­tions of lecterns, they also had to house the entirety of their control and pro­cess­ing elec­tron­ics, which must of course be readily ac­ces­si­ble for servicing, main­te­nance and re­con­fig­u­ra­tion. And because the tables would be used in flexible and re­con­fig­urable spaces, they also had to be able to act as both a full-height lectern for a standard lecture pre­sen­ta­tion and a standard-height table in a tutorial or col­lab­o­ra­tive learning situation.
Despite the risk that such a device could not be built without a serious com­pro­mise to some aspects of its per­for­mance, an intense design process involving everyone from academics to me­chan­i­cal, elec­tron­ic and elec­tri­cal engineers and an in­dus­tri­al designer from the Faculty of Design Ar­chi­tec­ture and Building, resulted in a design that meets all of those criteria.

THE OUTCOME

Ef­fec­tive­ly an ad­justable-height table, with under-slung AV racks and a pre­sen­ta­tion and control work surface, the Lecture Centre takes care of all its own signal pro­cess­ing, storage and replay, requiring con­nec­tions only to mains and data networks, beyond the audio and video display devices in the space it operates. UTS put the man­u­fac­ture of the Lecture Centre out to tender and engaged Wilson & Gilkes, well known for producing AV hardware and such things as equipment racks and iPad storage and transport dollies. After producing a range of man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­to­types and solving some of the un­fore­seen con­struc­tion problems, Wilson & Gilkes went on to man­u­fac­ture, assemble configure and load the elec­tron­ics into the tables, then warehouse and deliver them as they were needed for de­ploy­ment in the FEIT building. The special com­mis­sion is now being marketed by Wilson & Gilkes as the Lectrum Lecture Centre – UTS Edition.

Amongst the 140 Pre­sen­ta­tion Tables that will be rolled-out across the new fa­cil­i­ties, there are 40 distinct variants for specific purposes, including a wide selection of table sizes and table-top materials to match the design aes­thet­ics of the in­di­vid­ual spaces.
Core to the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the tables lies in the 3RU Crestron DMPS-300 Dig­i­tal­Me­dia Pre­sen­ta­tion System which packs in all the mul­ti­me­dia matrixing, digital and audio signal pro­cess­ing and signal am­pli­fi­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion required for a modern teaching or pre­sen­ta­tion space. A typical UTS Pre­sen­ta­tion Table would also in­cor­po­rate a Sony Blu-ray player; a Wolfvi­sion desktop document camera; a Shure gooseneck mi­cro­phone and a Sennheis­er radio mi­cro­phone and receiver; an HP all-in-one touch­screen computer on a Flo monitor arm; Extron USB-over-Ethernet in­ter­faces; Extron 100V line local am­pli­fi­ca­tion to drive ceiling speakers and a hearing loop; Linak linear actuators and con­trollers for elec­tri­cal­ly adjusting the height of the table; an HD-BaseT media trans­mit­ter, and a Cisco gigabit network switch. However, the flex­i­bil­i­ty of the table design allows for a vast range of cus­tomi­sa­tions for specific types of pre­sen­ta­tion and will allow the table to keep adapting to changes in tech­nol­o­gy and ap­pli­ca­tions for some time to come.