News

The global pandemic continues to upend pedagogical delivery around the world. As educational institutions commence classes, lessons learned from the move to virtual education earlier in the pandemic are rapidly being deployed globally at all levels of learning. Educators and administrators are searching for methods to eliminate “Zoom fatigue” by providing a richer visual experience and robust pedagogy for their students.

While video teleconferencing provides a simple pathway to students, it was designed for meetings, not for classrooms. However, educators have difficulty incorporating dynamic content such as blackboards, whiteboards, document cameras and presentations from their computers into these videoconferencing sessions. The problem is that video teleconferencing applications don’t provide the tools to easily combine and control content from multiple sources in a classroom environment. Educators are forced to fit their unique approach to delivering content into their laptop camera and face the distraction of changing inputs to show relevant content.

RGB Spectrum’s QuadView^® is a unique solution that quickly provides educators a method of delivering a richer distance learning experience to their students. Variations of this application have been applied at top business schools and Big 10 universities. The basic setup is shown in the figure below.

An in-room camera (1) with a wide shot of the educator’s blackboard and front of room is combined with an in-room camera showing any students that may be in the room (2). The wide shot of the educator provides the classroom context. For hybrid classes, the view of classroom students enhances the experience for remote learners. A total of up to 6 video sources, such as the educator’s laptop (3), cameras capturing views of the learning environment and educator, and a document camera (4) may be connected to a QuadView that then combines up to four of these sources into a single HDMI^® output. This single, composite image is then distributed by the video teleconferencing software for remote viewing by students.

QuadView in the classroom provides several benefits to educators, students, the educational institution, and the AV team tasked with making it all work. For educators, QuadView shifts the focus from the video teleconferencing software to them, freeing them to conduct classes the way they would if everyone were in the room, enabling their unique perspective and personality to shine through. It also gives educators the power to present a correlated view of multiple, pertinent content sources to expand the conversation.

For students, QuadView enables a better experience because they see the course materials in the context they were created. Institutions that have invested in their classrooms are able to offer courses that visually strengthen their brand and create a sense of community that video teleconferencing backgrounds cannot replicate. For the AV team, QuadView provides a simple, reliable way to enrich the distance learning support they deliver to the institution.

Visit the QuadView product page to learn more, or contact us to arrange a demonstration with an RGB Spectrum Regional Sales Manager.