Five new Nureva HDL300 audio conferencing systems are helping Massachusetts’ Bristol Community College improve engagement for students in remote classrooms that are conducted via audio and video conferencing. Students had been frustrated with the poor quality of the audio from the college’s legacy conferencing systems, which included all-in-one microphone, speaker, camera bars, tabletop mics and a lapel mic for the instructor. These traditional solutions inhibited interaction and collaboration because the students in satellite campuses could not hear or be heard adequately during class discussions. With the adoption of the HDL300 system, which is powered by Nureva’s Microphone Mist technology and features true full-room pickup, every student can hear and be heard and feel engaged in the class.
Audio conferencing is vital to Bristol’s use of distributed synchronous classes. This is an approach that allows students gathered in meeting rooms in Bristol’s four locations to attend the same class held by the same instructor by tuning in through audio and video conferencing. This allows the school to gain a critical mass of students for classes that might not attract enough students at a single location. The school can offer – and students can attend – more classes.
But there was an audio problem: In group collaboration where there were multiple people speaking at once, all the audio streams got truncated into one stream. Students in distant locations couldn’t hear properly so they couldn’t participate. With a tabletop system, side conversations overpowered the instructor’s voice. A lapel mic solution meant only the instructor could be heard.
The response from faculty to the new HDL300 systems has been overwhelmingly positive, and complaints from remote students about bad audio have stopped. The simplicity and ease of use of the HDL300 systems have also been game changers for IT staff at the college. The wall-mounted systems can be installed in 30 minutes or less and feature continuous auto-calibration that provides optimal performance no matter how a room is configured. Since instructors and students find it easy to start and use the systems, IT staff are saving many hours each week that they previously spent attending to issues with the traditional systems, time they can now devote to higher value tasks.
When combined with the Nureva Wall visual collaboration solution or other interactive display, the HDL300 system can also be used as the primary source for audio and video playback. The HDL300 system is designed to work with Zoom and most other third-party conference applications.
