Background

GateWay Community College (GCC), in Phoenix, Arizona – with approximately 13,000 students – is part of the largest community college district in the United States.

During a recent renovation, the college added 23 new classrooms, a PC networking lab, a vocational skills lab, two conference rooms, and a tri-divisible multi-purpose room. This new 125,000-square-foot Integrated Education Building also has 15 dual-screen classrooms, a single-screen art studio, and a three-screen multi-purpose room with over 200 seats. Around the same time, the college also remodelled the Maricopa Skill Center, a vocational school and division of Gateway Community College.

Goals

GateWay Community College wanted a state-of-the-art AV system and IT classrooms to complement its new Integrated Education Building and remodelled Maricopa Skill Center. The system needed to allow students and faculty access to digital AV and HDCP content in a simple-to-use configuration. 

An intuitive model that would be identical in all rooms was required, to reduce the need for troubleshooting by technical support staff. The college also needed to integrate digital and analog devices in the classrooms and reduce the size and cost of lectern-to-projector cabling.

Solution

For the classroom systems, the GateWay AV team selected the Kramer VP-729 ProScale® digital scaler/switcher and Kramer TP-573, and TP-574 DGKat™ twisted pair transmitters/receivers for HDMI, bidirectional RS-232, and IR signals – all of which are housed in a slim lectern in each room.

The VP-729 sits at the heart of the conference rooms. Videoconferencing equipment and a 60- or 70-inch display were also added. All multi-purpose rooms follow the same configuration and include a Kramer VS-66HDCPxl 6×6 DVI Matrix switcher, TP-581T/582R HDBaseT twisted pair transmitters/receivers, and FC-46xl audio de-embedders.

“After comparing the features, complexity, and pricing of a variety of products, we decided to use Kramer as a core infrastructure in designing our standardized classroom because it met our needs to handle both HDMI and HDCP,” says Senadz Lubovac, Coordinator of Audiovisual Information Technology at GateWay Community College.

Value

The relevant rooms in the Integrated Education Building and remodelled Maricopa Skill Center are now equipped with a state-of-the-art AV system. Intuitive to operate, the new technology gives students and faculty easy access to digital AV and HDCP content. And there’s little need for help calls to the college’s technical support team.

“This design with the VP-729 scaler/switcher as the backbone enables us to display any analog or digital AV device on the screens with easy interface control,” says Lubovac.

With the budget, a major success factor for GCC, “Kramer’s pricing made a real difference.”

Background

Illinois State University, located in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, was the state’s first public university.  Founded in 1857, the school has approximately 18,000 undergraduate students, 2,300 graduate students and 3,560 employees, including 1,224 departmental faculty. Illinois State University has received numerous awards.

For 2017, U.S News & World Report ranked the school 78^th among America’s best public universities for academic quality and excellence. Illinois State received a rank of 22^nd from College Factual among the best colleges for the money out of 1,200 schools and was included among the country’s best universities for veterans. Illinois State is also listed among the best schools for military and veteran education by Military Advanced Education & Transition and was named a “Gold Medal-level Military Friendly School” by Victory Media. 

Goals

Illinois University wanted to find a digital audio-video solution for its classrooms that would allow faculty to easily switch between different video sources in 320 classrooms. In 2009, the university began to add more AV technology in its classrooms, but incident rates reflected the fact that faculty members had trouble using it. To reduce the number of incidents and service calls, the customer wanted to switch all classrooms to digital while ensuring ease of use.

Kramer was tasked to convert all 320 classrooms with the appropriate scaler/switcher to make sure the faculty’s user experience was seamless no matter where a class was being held.

Solution

The Kramer custom integrator recommended the VP-728* and VP-730* and a 9-input ProScale™ presentation scaler/switchers for analog and digital video with picture-in-picture, picture-and-picture, and split-screen capability. In addition, the VP-773A, an 8-input HDMI & HDBaseT ProScale™ presentation switcher/scaler with 2K support and an audio power amplifier was installed in each of the classrooms. In so doing, Illinois State was able to convert all 320 classrooms to digital capabilities with easy-to-use interfaces.

Value

Kramer presentation switchers have allowed Illinois State AV specialists to provide faculty with a standard setup for each classroom. “They can go from room to room and know what’s going to be there such as a computer, document camera, and the likes; and Kramer has the switching core. We put in a standard user interface and they know that if they press ‘computer’, the magic happens and the computer shows up on their projector, and they don’t have to think about it,” says Doug Smith, Director, Learning Spaces and Audio-Visual Technologies at Illinois State University.

Doug further explains that despite there being more technology now, the incident rate has plummeted. “As we ramped up our responsibilities, the number of times we had to go in and revisit rooms just kept dropping. The impact has been staggering.”

In addition, through reduced service calls and incidents, among other things, Doug adds that the Kramer solution has saved the university money. “The product is rock-solid, Kramer support is rock-solid and the solution saves me money every time I turn around”.

* The VP-732 is Kramer’s most current product for this specific use (recommended).