Universities Upgrade Classrooms with AV-over-IP Technology

“In the old days, you needed separate video, audio, power and control cables just to get a simple classroom working,” says Way, UCLA’s executive director of digital spaces. “With networked AV, you have one connection that can pass all of that information. Your network switch becomes the hub of your entire system. That means cost savings, labor savings and flexibility.”

Colleges and universities are beginning to upgrade their classrooms with AVoIP platforms. Many institutions are taking a phased approach, incorporating AVoIP in new buildings, or as existing equipment reaches end of life and budgets allow.

“There typically isn’t a budget to forklift and replace all of them, so you’re going to be managing a mixed environment no matter what you do,” says David Danto, principal analyst at TalkingPointz.

Vendors are increasingly supporting AVoIP natively in their products, he says. Cameras, microphones, speakers and touch panels can connect over standard Ethernet (RJ45) ports, support Power over Ethernet and run entirely over CAT 6 cabling, which eliminates the need for separate power, control, and signal lines and the distance limitations of HDMI.

Because every room uses the same cable type and network infrastructure, classroom designs become repeatable and easier to build at scale, Danto says.

DISCOVER: AVoIP helps institutions modernize their learning experiences.

UCLA’s “Smart Campus” Approach

Way oversees UCLA’s campuswide AV technology, including classroom environments, live production, conference rooms and digital signage. He spent his first year auditing spaces, building a team and developing a strategy with the university’s Teaching and Learning Center and Facilities Management.

Each classroom modernized as part of the pilot project features flexible, movable furniture; large Sony displays and Panasonic projectors that project onto wall panels that double as writing surfaces; and speakers, Sennheiser ceiling microphones and Crestron touch panels, all selected through a multi-tiered request for proposals process.

Tying everything together is cloud-based smart campus software that integrates AVoIP equipment and automates the classroom environment. 

The platform is overlaid on a proprietary, custom, in-house AV control system on BruinCloud, UCLA’s private cloud. It runs on top of the smart campus software and encodes and decodes audio and video streams, delivering a signal directly without the normal encoder/decoder barriers.

The platform integrates with course schedules, powering up AV equipment 10 minutes before a class starts and shutting it down when it ends. The system also knows which professors are booked for the classrooms and launches the right apps based on their preferences, Way says. It integrates with the learning management system, automatically launching Panopto for lecture capture, so students can review recorded classes on demand.

Way is now getting feedback and making improvements. In the meantime, UCLA has built five additional AVoIP classrooms and plans to upgrade the remaining 188 general-assignment classrooms over the next two years. “This was not an AV upgrade. This was creating a smart campus,” he says. 

Fox Valley Technical College Begins AVoIP Rollout

When Brandon Landwehr joined Fox Valley Technical College a decade ago, the Appleton, Wis., school had no AV standards. Dozens of projector, TV, scaler and switch models were scattered across 12 buildings, with no consistency.

Landwehr, now the district’s AV services manager, first standardized the technology and implemented centralized management. With the help of a three-person team managing nearly 400 classrooms, offices and meeting rooms, he adopted Crestron’s XiO Cloud software, which allows the team to remotely monitor device uptime and proactively address issues when something goes offline.

LEARN MORE: Classroom audio solutions shouldn’t be a headache for your IT team.

Last year, Landwehr upgraded 12 classrooms with AVoIP technology using Crestron’s DM NVX platform and plans to upgrade another dozen this year.

Before deploying, he spent nine months working with the networking team to make sure the infrastructure could handle the extra bandwidth and avoid conflicts with other multicast devices. 

To ensure success, they segregated AVoIP devices onto a separate virtual LAN. “There was a lot of testing and prep ahead of our first deployment, and then, once we had it all in place, deployments have been a breeze. It’s been almost plug and play,” Landwehr says.

The Crestron AVoIP solution includes DM NVX encoders and decoders that move audio and video across the network and a Crestron control system that manages the AV devices in each room.

“It reduces the amount of gear we have to deploy in a room, which also increases reliability because there are fewer points of failure,” he says.

UNC Wilmington Finds Cost Savings and Flexibility With AVoIP

Robb Mann first introduced AVoIP classrooms at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2020, when Veterans Hall opened. The building features active learning classrooms, lecture halls and labs that now serve as the model for future AVoIP deployments.

Today, UNCW has 40 to 50 AVoIP classrooms across five buildings, with three more buildings planned. Mann standardized on the Extron NAV Pro platform, which uses encoders and decoders to move audio and video over 10-gigabyte Cisco Catalyst 9300 switches. Two Extron NAVigator appliances manage up to 240 endpoints each per building.

AVoIP has proved to be significantly cheaper than point-to-point AV designs, says Mann, the university’s manager of integrated educational technologies. When the Health and Human Services department wanted to stream content from a third-floor lab to a first-floor classroom, Mann did it without additional costs. A traditional AV approach would have cost $80,000, he says.

Instructors control everything from an Extron touch panel. They can turn on the projector, choose what to display and select camera presets. Each room features two Vaddio cameras, Shure ceiling microphones, dual monitors at the lectern and LG TVs on the walls.

A key to UNCW’s success has been its relationship with the networking team. Mann buys Cisco switches, and in return, IT handles all maintenance.

Overall, the investment into AVoIP is paying off, he says. “It’s flexibility on a large scale, cost savings and future proofing the university.”