Online Education Made Easy and Versatile in Hybrid Classrooms with Vaddio

Challenge

ROC Aventus is a regional educational center that offers vocational courses and training for adults in several locations between the cities of Apeldoorn, Deventer and Zutphen in the Netherlands. The Educational Center was confronted with rapid changes in the first Covid-19 lockdown in the Netherlands in 2020. In September, classes were at a third of the normal size. They needed to find solutions to reach the people that were present in-class as well as engage with the larger group who were following online from home. The teaching strategy had to change overnight to a hybrid learning solution in which both in person and at home groups could participate actively in their lessons.

Solution

The team at Aventus worked together with Legrand I AV partner, Limid, to create a solution that would enable the instructors to teach as they were used to as much as possible. Wout van Bruchem, Senior Manager for Infrastructure at Aventus explains: “This request didn’t originate from the technical side, so we had to build the situation that would help the teachers and engage students. From a collaboration-group, we determined that the solution should be accessible, uniform and durable. The solutions also had to be affordable.”

Limid has a long experience with Vaddio and offered their products to connect with all preset goals. In the Aventus situation, the teacher would walk into the classroom with his or her laptop, plug it in and connect to Microsoft Teams using the in-room camera and microphones. The Vaddio ConferenceSHOT AV was chosen in combination with a CeilingMIC near the students and a TableMIC with the teacher. Two presets were used in the camera; one close-up on the teacher/ board and one wide shot of the class.

Results

Aventus equipped 20 classrooms with this setup that was immediately put to good use in September 2020. The new hybrid classrooms feature a professional PTZ camera that offers a high-quality USB 3.0 stream and 360 degrees audio registration microphones. The easy connectivity makes it effortless for teachers and the presets offer a perfectly framed and professional image.

Wout van Bruchem adds “We tried to think ahead, and I believe we managed to do exactly that. We were quickly up and running with hybrid education and continue to see opportunities beyond Covid-19. Right now, we cannot imagine a classroom without a quality camera set-up, and we think this will enhance what we can offer in the future. Vaddio has delivered on what we set out to achieve. I can honestly say that everyone understands the entire set-up in a classroom within the first hour of using it. Yes, at Aventus, we are happy with how this turned out. I also really appreciate the Vaddio Deployment Tool that allows us to monitor all 20 classrooms. “