Merced College
Founded in 1962, Merced College is a community college located in the California town of the same name. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, classes shifted from in-person to distance learning. As an early adopter of Zoom for internal meetings, the school was able to leverage this experience to help conduct classes remotely. While the platform worked as a stop-gap measure, the college determined that a more comprehensive solution was needed to create HyFlex rooms that provides both in-person and remote students with an equally great learning experience.
To enable the results envisioned by the college, 115 classrooms needed to be outfitted with conferencing systems that included microphones, speakers, cameras, and displays, with installation to be completed during summer 2021 in time for the fall semester. A robust conferencing system with professional grade performance that could also be installed quickly would be essential for ensuring the project would be completed in time.
Solution
Merced’s integrator, EKC Enterprises Inc., recommended Biamp’s TesiraFORTÉ X 400 large conference room bundle as the ideal solution for the college’s room audio needs. Featuring two Parle ceiling mics, four Desono C-IC6 ceiling speakers, TesiraFORTÉ X 400, and the necessary Cat 5 cables to connect them all together, this bundle includes everything needed to set up a large conference room.
Another key factor for recommending the TesiraFORTÉ X bundle was the inclusion of Biamp Launch, the one-touch automatic device discovery and tuning feature. Launch allowed rooms to be tuned quickly, a major advantage due to the large number of rooms involved in the project. At minimum, EKC was able to install two classrooms a day per pair of installers.
Conclusion
Since completing the installation, Merced College reports the reaction from the professors has been extremely favorable, appreciating that they can leverage their knowledge of the Zoom desktop client in classrooms while having the support of a powerful AV system. “We’ve been very happy with the ease of use of the audio system. Basically, there is nothing to do except to adjust the system volume. Dial it up or down, that’s it,” said Manuel Costa, Merced’s education media technician. “We get a lot of comments about how good the quality of the audio is with the Biamp system. That was a very big thing for us.”