One such example is our involvement in Deakin University’s Building IB Refurbishment project. Our simultaneous design allows one teacher to deliver one class across two campuses in different locations at one time. This is providing efficiencies to the university while improving student access to a course that would otherwise have been cancelled due to low numbers in one campus. Roneel explains, “The enhanced student experience is facilitated through our AV solutions which ensure the seamless transfer of teaching language, intelligible speech and visual connection – elements that are critical to engagement and interaction between students and the teacher.”
Education Supercharged As part of delivering education at a broad scale, there has been an evolution towards superlabs – multi-disciplinary facilities saturated with technology that can accommodate large groups of around 250. WSP played a key role in the development of Australian’s first superlab – the award-winning X-LAB at the University of Technology Sydney. It seats 240 people and is designed to make the greatest use of multimedia while minimising distraction. It can accommodate both large first-year classes and smaller, more specialised groups, with up to 12 classes taking place simultaneously. There are eight demonstrator stations at the front, and teachers use a touchscreen to push up to three different HD videostreams to student displays, or pull content from one group to show to the class. Even though the benches are only 1.5m apart, adjacent students can listen to completely different things. WSP’s audio design effectively creates smaller, acoustically isolated areas within an open-plan space, using ultra-directional speaker systems. The university had projected that it would need five extra teaching labs by 2020, or approximately 3,000 m2 m of additional space. Building the superlab saved more than 350 m2, as well as the need for walls and corridors between separate spaces, and consolidated staffing requirements too.
Interactive Campuses
The most common large size is now about 100 seats,” explains Roneel. “However, we’re also seeing the development of non-didactic spaces where you can fit 60 people, with a walkable central corridor and a screen on each side. This allows groups of six students to sit around a table with a dedicated screen, and the lecturer can send individual content to each of those screens. And remote students have the opportunity to dial in.” In helping Western Sydney University bring its 14-storey vertical campus to life in Parramatta, we delivered stateof-the-art technology to enable innovative collaboration and learning.
INNOVATION
“Our vision is to create learning spaces where students can use multiple media sources simultaneously, and be able to work in the same room as people from different disciplines who are solving very different problems, alone or in groups.”
“The modern classrooms were developed with the university to provide an environment where the lecturer can move around the room and be connected to students locally and remotely,” explains Roneel. “Our design included complex audio and video solutions to enable a seamless technology experience that complements teaching styles. “We worked closely with academic staff to understand classroom scenarios and teaching techniques to tailor our designs to the faculty’s needs. The result is the creation of one of the most digitally-infused and technology-rich academic and research spaces in Australia. For example, our advanced AV capabilities can track the movements of the lecturer and allow for presentation and consultation of sessions for remote students.”
Where to Next? Roneel believes that the next frontier is a totally immersive teaching experience. “Tools for 3D models and visualisations already exist – now we just have to make them work at scale in the classroom or lecture theatre. Being able to take 3D models and interact with them will become the norm. We’re maybe five, at most eight years away from this paradigm.”
While there has been a trend towards creating superlabs, education institutions are also building smaller lecture theatres.
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