University of Calgary’s Taylor Institute

Case Study: University of Calgary – Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning

The project at  Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning (at University of Calgary campus in Canada) was done by Arrive Systems, a sister company under the Visionaire Group that manufactures and develops hardware and software including collaboration solutions. To achieve Taylor Institute’s guiding principles of collaboration, flexibility and transparency, Arrive Systems worked with consultants and partners in coming up with mobile collaboration stations so that instructors can set up the learning space in different ways.

Overview

The Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning made its new home in a cutting-edge building at the heart of the University of Calgary’s main campus. The 40,000 square-foot building is at once a building for innovation, a community of colleagues, and a collection of activities dedicated to better understanding and improving student learning.

The building was designed with three guiding principles: flexibility, transparency and collaboration. All of the building’s learning spaces are fully flexible, with furniture that can be arranged in different configurations. The spaces are infused with technology : a huge grid of floor boxes and free standing mobile collaboration stations – so the instructor can set up the space in different ways. With this vision, Taylor Institute has pioneered its technology mission into creating a shining example of the Internet of AV Things.

Challenge

The Institute gathers people from across campus to inspire and be inspired by new pedagogical thought, conversation, and practice. The new building was designed with great attention to transparency, inquiry, collaboration, and flexibility.

To achieve these goals, Taylor Institute needed the technological ability to have mobile collaboration stations that would:

• provision instantaneous and mobile media collaboration stations on-the-go with “zero” set-up time.
• access media and applications on the Institute’s intranet and the internet, at the touch of a finger.
• launch impromptu video and whiteboard collaboration sessions, from anywhere on the floor grid.
• provide wireless BYOD media sharing capability on every mobile collaboration station, irrespective of its location.
• manage a collection of mobile collaboration stations centrally, with full flexibility, to build upon and grow the user interface experience by seamlessly provisioning new applications.

To meet these challenges, The Sextant Group described the requirements to Arrive Systems, and jointly collaborated to envision the “Internet-of-AV” mobile collaboration stations powered centrally by the Arrive FacePoint EdgelessMedia collaboration processors.

Solution

Thirty-seven “mobile collaboration stations”, each equipped with an interactive flat panel display and USB camera with integrated microphone, provide passive mobile collaboration on the Institute’s floor grid. These mobile collaboration stations come live when they connect seamlessly to any one of the centrally installed Arrive FacePoint® EdgelessMedia Collaboration Processors via a digital media matrix. Users instantaneously enjoy the touch interactive user interface with custom graphics for Taylor Institute without wasting any set-up time. The complete functionality is executed by a single press when choosing one of the two buttons on the UI: one for video collaboration and the other for a local session. The sessions launch immediately.

Each FacePoint® processor is a single, all-in-one, fan-less, industrial strength processing machine running Arrive’s leading edge FacePoint® EdgelessMedia application and UI software. The single, ultra-compact system is capable of providing users access to Taylor Institute’s very own integrated application widget store to flexibly publish custom widgets that are available as: executable applications, media on networked drives, internet browsers, and any application located on the intranet or internet with just the url. Arrive’s HDMI to USB Media Capture Bridge provides the ability for the wireless media sharing capability of Mersive Pods to be seamlessly presented on the processor desktop which becomes visible on the connected station’s display located anywhere on the floor grid. Arrive’s OnePoint EdgelessMedia Server, which is hosted on the University’s Intranet, provides the central configuration, management and customization for the Taylor Institute.