Background
As Iowa’s oldest community college, North Iowa Area Community College (NIACC) has been educating students of all ages and abilities since 1918. The institution’s goal is to provide the four-year college experience at a two-year college price. Each year, NIACC serves more than 2,900 degree-seeking students across 70 programs and credential options – and thousands more through continuing education.
Customer Needs
To immerse students in innovative presentation and collaboration technology and give them hands-on learning experiences in small group settings, NIACC wanted to bring a STEM classroom to campus. But faculty and staff weren’t sure how it should function or which technologies they wanted to incorporate. So they asked technology integrators to share potential concepts.
Solution
After talking to CEC’s AV applications engineering manager about his design ideas, NIACC decided to pursue that STEM classroom plan. It involves classroom technology with high-performance features that are also easy for faculty members to learn and use.
Now that the classroom is up and running, NIACC has a flexible, active learning space where students and educators can access, collaborate on, and share digital information through technology like:
- In-room audio that improves interaction and reduces voice fatigue
- Screens within arms’ reach of each student so they can see PowerPoint slides and notes, which improved classroom engagement
- A live-image camera system with built-in HD recording so lectures and presentations can be captured
- A presenter tracking camera that smoothly and accurately pans and tilts to follow a presenter around the classroom
- The ability to stream out video and audio to computers, tablets, or smartphones in the room
- External camera control through a room-control system, a videoconferencing system, or a computer
“I liked CEC’s passion for this project and the technology we used. They worked hard to make sure we were happy and satisfied with how everything worked. CEC also created instructions specifically for us and gave a demo to faculty and staff so we can troubleshoot and manage systems on our own.”
