The University of Warwick opened the doors of The Oculus, its dedicated teaching and learning building, to the campus community in October of 2016. This flagship building deployed state-of-the-art technology in every learning space, including new sound systems, visualizers, and of course, Solstice as the wireless presentation system.
As students and instructors alike quickly discovered, Solstice is so much more than just a wireless presentation system. It does not just replace the cable that tethers a presenter to the front of the room – it acts as a true communication platform, accessible by any member of the classroom, from any device they brought with them.
The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach paid off, as University of Warwick IT Services Owner Jonathan Owens attributes the quick adoption of Solstice at least partially to the familiar user interface. The Solstice app, which is uniform across all devices, uses the same intuitive point and drag interface as many other mobile-optimized apps and lowers the barrier to entry to users.
The Oculus is designed to be a collaborative knowledge transfer environment, not just another group of classrooms, and the facility houses student-lead and community events in addition to regular lectures, so it is critical that any presenter, with any background, be able to walk into the space and get their content up on the display, where it’s a standard touch-enabled screen in a small room or the impressive 4-screen video wall in the atrium.
The technology doesn’t end at the classroom door – interactive digital boards help new guests navigate the facility, and each room has a screen outside that can show availability. With Solstice’s room scheduling via calendar integration feature, introduced with 3.1, administrators can easily use the Solstice API to tie on-screen Solstice schedule information into existing infrastructure like these screens without having to purchase any additional hardware. The flexibility of Solstice’s software-based architecture will allow buildings like The Oculus to keep their content collaboration solution up to date and ready to integrate with any new systems that may get introduced into the technology landscape.
