Transforming the student experience with digital learning tech

The background

The University of Northampton (UoN) is one the UK’s youngest universities. Standing on the banks of the River Nene, its advanced new Waterside Campus supports over 15,000 students. Enter one of its five buildings, you soon spot signs of an extensive digital transformation journey. Impressive, multi-screen video walls display event information.

Interactive wayfinding kiosks show you around. Students and lecturers gather around screens, sharing content and collaborating across 116 teaching spaces. It’s all part of a new IT and AV teaching platform designed by UoN to deliver to transform lives and inspire change.

UoN wanted create a student-centric teaching infrastructure that attracts digitally fluent students in a competitive marketplace. It needed to enable collaborative and independent learning, nurture students’ digital literacy and prepare them for the world of work. Kinly was appointed as a trusted technology advisor to design and integrate cutting-edge AV solutions that support UoN in its mission to offer a first-class digital learning experience.

The solution

When the University changed its preferred control technology and teaching platform just weeks before the final high-level design deadline, the pressure was on for the Kinly team. Collaborating with Andrew Taylor, UoN’s Digital Integration Lead, we rapidly designed a working solution that integrated technology from a revised mix of vendors.

“We had a really short timeframe to turn our new high-level design into a working system. Kinly rose to the challenge and delivered for us,” said Andrew.

With installation and commissioning complete, the Waterside campus welcomed its first students on schedule in September. Students immediately see the difference. Rhey no longer get frustrated watching lecturers battle broken projectors. Instead, lecturers upload teaching materials in advance to the university’s virtual learning environment. Then, as class starts, they simply open their laptops, connect to the AV platform and materials instantly appear on digital screens. As a result, students get more value from their contact time.

“It’s more enjoyable for our lecturers, who can focus on teaching,” says Andrew. “But it’s fantastic for our students who benefit from the more engaging, collaborative teaching style our platform supports.”

The platform has transformed how Andrew’s team works. Every morning, he runs a remote maintenance check, sending out commands to the AV equipment across campus. His team then fixes any potential issues, ensuring the equipment is working – long before students and lecturers arrive for classes. The combination of control platform and well-installed equipment has also boosted overall reliability. “We’ve got far fewer technical issues to deal with now,” says Andrew.

The result

The new digital screens allow UoN to avoid the cost of over £100k a year just for replacement projector bulbs. In addition, the control platform lets Andrew’s team remotely turn off or dim the screens overnight in areas of buildings that are not used 24/7. “This saves us around £17k a year in electricity costs,” says Andrew.

The university’s new videoconferencing rooms allow for more effective meetings. But that’s not realising their full potential. In future, they can support the delivery of classes beyond the Waterside campus to partner institutions worldwide. By avoiding the need for lecturers to travel, this will save costs and dramatically reduce the UoN’s carbon footprint.