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In response to the pandemic, Harvard Business School (HBS) needed to provide a learning experience to accommodate both remote and in-classroom students. To meet the challenge, a collaborative team within HBS IT designed novel, hybrid classrooms to maintain the integrity of the classroom experience by accommodating both classroom and remote students with a familiar teaching environment.

HBS AV engineers and Instructional Designers faced significant design requirements. First, they needed the classroom chalkboards and class materials to be clearly visible to remote students, allowing professors to teach in the classroom the way they did prior to the pandemic. Second, they had to capture the faces of individual classroom and remote students and for them to be seen together simultaneously.

The engineers needed a simple pathway to support remote students. The ideal conduit was video teleconferencing. The key challenge was incorporating the variety of dynamic content, such as blackboards, whiteboards, cameras and PC presentations, into these videoconferencing sessions. To accomplish this, HBS engineers utilized the multi-image display capability of RGB Spectrum’s QuadView^® multiviewer, a unique solution that provides a method of delivering a richer distance-learning experience.

The QuadView UHDx displays up to four switchable sources simultaneously in a consolidated image in a variety of customizable layouts. Each hybrid classroom contains a variety of sources for student viewing. The classroom is equipped with a 4K camera capturing a wide shot of the educator’s blackboard and front of room and a second showing students in the classroom. Additional sources include document cameras. The QuadView UHDx combines up to four of these sources in windows and feeds this single, consolidated output into the video teleconferencing application distributed to remote students. The multiviewer provides remote students with a correlated view of the classroom, fellow classmates and professor, to foster classroom interaction.

According to Justin Fowler, Senior AV Engineer at the Harvard Business School, “we needed a multiviewer that preserved the high 4K image quality of the cameras plus the flexibility of custom layouts, window layering, and window cropping. The RGB Spectrum QuadView was the only product on the market that could meet these requirements at an affordable price point. It makes remote students a part of the classroom experience.”

RGB Spectrum’s QuadView UHDx multiviewer displays up to four sources on a single screen at up to 4K 60Hz resolution with customizable display windows.

The feature-rich QuadView UHDx delivers superior image quality at up to 4K 60Hz resolution. Educators can mix sources of differing resolutions, scale any input up to 4K resolution, and route any input to any window. Up to 32 layouts are provided. Built-in audio switching allows selection of audio from any source — even those not currently displayed. Control methods include the front panel, a web interface, and third-party control devices. The QuadView allows educators to conduct classes as if everyone were present in the room, with a correlated view of content to expand the conversation.

The hybrid classroom achieves the primary goal of preserving the original HBS case method style of instruction. The response from educators, students and staff has been extremely positive. Overall, all report that they are very pleased with the experience and the results. A proven success, more hybrid classrooms are to come.