Streamlining Meeting Space Technology for More Productive Meetings

OTDI’s Learning and Collaborative Environments team has kicked off the process of streamlining OSU meeting room technology. While it will take years to standardize equipment across campus, LCE has created a standard Conference Room technology package to start that process.

While this is a long-term goal, having standard equipment in rooms offers many benefits:

• Consistent meeting room technology provides a familiar, intuitive user experience from space to space.
• Standardized AV systems allow support staff to develop deep knowledge on specific technologies, enabling them to troubleshoot and correct problems more quickly.
• Using similar technology at scale enables us to stock extra equipment and parts, expediting system repairs and minimizing downtime.
• Systems built on the same standard can be remotely monitored and managed, allowing for pro-active maintenance and remote troubleshooting.

Even with a “standard” package, there is no one-size-fits-all audio visual set up that will work for every room. Each system requires some customization depending on how the room is used, the department’s needs, the size of the space and available budget.

New construction provided LCE with the opportunity to develop this new, scalable package. We were tasked with building new AV systems for the Pelotonia Research Center (PRC) and University Square South in 2022. While working on these projects, our team developed use-case requirements, prospective user profiles, and an AV standard that encompassed a wide range of functional requirements.

To meet the challenges these spaces presented, our team created a model that could be easily scaled, replicated, and supported. The standard Conference Room package may include:

• Display(s) sized appropriately for the physical space
• Combination camera, microphone, and speaker
• A control interface touch panel
• Wireless presentation capability
• A computer that can interface with popular conferencing technologies, such as Zoom and Teams, so meeting participants are not required to bring their own devices

Additional equipment, such as a whiteboard camera, can be installed as well, especially if a room is used both as a classroom and for meetings.

Our team continues to refine its process with projects underway in Mount Hall, the Energy Advancement, and Innovation Center (EAIC) and the Student Entrepreneurship Center. We will continuously assess new products and enhance our conference room packages by incorporating equipment that offers added capability and value. MITS partners have the option to request the Conference Room package as their budgets allows.