No Interruptions

Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM

Ten minutes into a video during a film studies lecture, the projector flashes “no signal” on a blank screen. With 200 students waiting, the professor attempts a “quick fix,” but after 15 minutes of pressing buttons and rearranging projector cables without success, he gives up and dismisses class. He heads back to his office intending to report the problem, but is intercepted by a student and promptly forgets about the projector. The next day, after three more instructors are unable to complete their classes, the Office of Classroom Support is finally notified of the malfunctioning projector. What the university didn't expect to find while addressing this challenge was a solution that would eventually be used for emergency communications on campus.

Steve Clark, director of classroom support at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, is charged with providing support to 21,000 students and 1,400 faculty members across a 1,000-acre campus. With such a large user-base scattered among 74 buildings, the existing one-way message system connecting classrooms with the support center was proving to be a bottleneck. In addition to unreported problems, when professors did contact the help desk to report technical difficulties, the descriptions were insufficient to solve the problem without going on-site. “Our people were running into classrooms with no idea of what the problem was,” Clark says. This resulted in longer periods of class disruption, and even cancellation. Clark's goal of keeping turnaround on service requests to less than 24 hours was proving elusive, and faculty complaints about the delays were increasing. He faced a dilemma concerning how to maintain campus equipment so that classes are not disrupted or cancelled, instructors are satisfied, and his small technical staff is deployed effectively. And how to lower his department's average response time to less than 10 minutes?

Simple-to-use communication system

Clark began to search for a cost-effective intercom system. “Our hope was to establish a simple-to-use, two-way communication system in our classrooms. We evaluated PC-based software solutions that required extra microphones, individual configurations and extensive-user training, as well as various network-based intercom systems with some nice features, but which usually required an expensive hardware infrastructure.”

“Since many of our classrooms don't have PCs, we realized a software solution would not meet our requirements, and classroom support needed an inexpensive hardware solution. We chose the ii3 Internet Protocol (IP) Intercom from Digital Acoustics, Lake Forest, Ill., because configuration is simple, the cost is cheaper than adding new equipment to the network and installation was plug-and-play,” he says.

To date, the Office of Classroom Support has installed 337 ii3 IP Intercoms in classrooms across campus, providing educators with the equivalent of a standard Push-to-Talk Intercom. Plugged into UNC Charlotte's existing local and wide area networks, the intercoms provide instant two-way communication between the classroom and the help desk using standard network audio protocols.

To complete the picture, the Digital Acoustics TalkMaster Enterprise Edition (EE) Software provides central command-and-control functions, allowing multiple PCs to manage two-way communications easily among many intercom units. “The Digital Acoustics intercoms leverage our existing infrastructure, and TalkMaster provides the scalability and failover capabilities that are absolutely essential for a campus-wide support operation,” Clark says. “And with Digital Acoustics software providing multiple console support, we can use more than one PC to monitor calls.” The software also provides the means to record and queue help requests, which are processed in turn as support staff become available.

In case of emergency

It wasn't until 2006 that the Office of Classroom Support discovered a new use for the intercom solution. An electrical problem on campus caused an explosion that knocked out power at UNC Charlotte. “People were frantically posting signs and sending voicemails to stay away from the building. It was a logistical nightmare,” Clark says. The lack of power caused a number of communication problems and tested the university's emergency preparedness. “I went to the Provost and proposed the use of Digital Acoustics intercoms in those types of emergencies,” Clark adds. “The idea was well-received, and we've been working to equip every gathering space with these intercoms. We had our wakeup call before Virginia Tech, but that incident cemented how important it is to have a multi-pronged approach in place for handling emergencies.”

With instructors reporting they are “extremely happy” with the improved response time, a top priority for UNC Charlotte is to place ii3 IP Intercoms in the majority of classrooms on campus, as well as at satellite locations. With more than 300 units installed, Clark's goal is to reach 100 percent saturation during the rest of this academic year, including classrooms with minimal technology as well as high-tech locations.

In addition, UNC Charlotte recently installed and successfully tested a warning siren, which provides a warning sound and verbal messages to people who are outdoors on campus in the event of an imminent emergency.

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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