As part of Coleg Sir Gâr’s plans to provide quality HyFlex courses to their students, they needed an interactive display solution which would allow teachers to easily interact with students both in-person and online.

After experiencing a number of interactive whiteboard displays, which did not meet their requirements, Coleg Sir Gâr chose the BenQ RP7502 interactive displays which, due to their 4K display, numerous interactive features and integration with cloud-based learning software, provided the perfect hybrid solution.

The integration of 80 x RP7502 and 5 x ST7502 displays across five of seven campuses in Coleg Sir Gâr is greatly improving its HyFlex offering, allowing students to work from anywhere.

Coleg Sir Gâr had long been looking for an interactive whiteboard solution to promote interactivity and support hybrid learning in the classrooms. For the past two years, Charlie Hammond, the college’s Digital Innovation Manager, has been focused on upgrading the college’s classroom technology to ensure that Coleg Sir Gâr can provide the highest quality of teaching for both their in-person and remote students.

As more schools and colleges adopt HyFlex course models, looking at innovative solutions to keep both in-person and remote students engaged was paramount to attracting students to study at Coleg Sir Gâr.

The college needed to update its current projectors, which had become end-of-life, so that they could integrate cloud-based learning environments such as Google Classroom, which would allow teachers to move between classrooms and ensure they could access resources from anywhere. Charlie was also conscious that to provide the best hybrid learning experiences for students, the college needed a crystal-clear 4K display so content would be visible both in-person and over a webcam.

The college put out a tender to help find the ideal solution which was won by Strive AV. Thanks to the RP7502’s 4K displays, Google integration, interactive features, including leading annotation tool EZWrite and wireless display solution InstaShare, the boards proved the ideal solution for the college.

After a quick and efficient delivery by Strive AV, 80 x RP7502 and 5 x ST7502 displays have been installed across five of seven campuses in Coleg Sir Gâr, beginning the transition to creating HyFlex classrooms across the college. The mix of premium audio and visual technology combined with built-in wireless sharing solutions meant that BenQ’s displays were the perfect solution for the college.

The RP7502’s built-in microphone provides crystal-clear audio, which ensures that students learning remotely do not miss out on any important information. This also saves time both for IT staff and teachers as they are not required to set up fiddly external microphones before the start of each lesson, allowing more time for productive learning. In addition, teachers are able to record the audio of every lecture and save it directly to the board, meaning that absent students can easily catch up.

Teachers can also utilise the RP7502’s inbuilt mics to control presentations and annotate documents with voice control, allowing for more flexible and dynamic classroom presentations.

The 4K display, complete with tempered glass and anti-glare coating, guarantees visibility whatever the light conditions and ensures that students learning remotely can see the screen clearly. Teachers have noted the improvement in image quality, with more utilising HD films and videos to bring curriculum content to life in the classroom.

Another feature teachers have been loving is the display’s integration with InstaShare software – BenQ’s exclusive wireless app solution that allows for content to be streamed directly to the board from a mobile device. This has been particularly helpful for science and engineering teachers when demonstrating intricate procedures. Using InstaShare, teachers can use the app on their phones to provide an aerial view of the procedure which is then wirelessly streamed directly to the display. This gives every student the best view of the demonstration without the need to crowd around the teacher’s desk.

The integration of 80 x RP7502 and 5 x ST7502 displays across five of Coleg Sir Gâr seven campuses is greatly improving the college’s HyFlex offering, allowing students to work from anywhere. Charlie Hammond notes that many students are taking advantage of the flexibility that hybrid learning offers them, particularly those that live some distance from the college. The RP7502’s integrated cloud services will allow teachers to seamlessly move between campuses by being able to access their resources remotely via the built-in account management system (AMS). The device management system (DMS) has also been a huge benefit to the school’s IT teams as they can manage all RP and ST series displays across five campuses remotely through the cloud.

The RP7502 also comes inbuilt with EZWrite 6 live whiteboarding software which promotes interactivity between in-person and remote students by allowing both to annotate documents and answer questions in real time. An added bonus has been BenQ’s ClassroomCare™ technology. To protect staff and students, each interactive display is empowered with a germ-resistant screen, a nano-ionic silver coating to prevent the spread of pathogens and touch-based transmission in the classroom. Meanwhile the RP7502’s smart eye-care technology safeguards students’ eye health by ensuring each display is low-blue light, flicker-free and glare resistant. Another market leading feature of the RP7502 displays has been the inbuilt air quality sensors which monitor CO2 and particulate matter levels in the classroom. This has allowed staff to gain valuable insights into the air quality in the college and they have now made it a priority to increase ventilation throughout their classrooms.

According to Charlie Hammond, the Digital Innovation Manager at Coleg Sir Gâr, "the RP7502’s air quality sensor has highlighted the importance of ventilation in classrooms and learning spaces. Teachers always have a visual reminder of the levels and can open windows accordingly to provide the best learning environment. Providing better ventilation in our classrooms has without a doubt improved our students’ engagement and concentration in lessons. Moving forward with Strive AV, we are now looking to integrate more BenQ displays across our campuses to give both teachers and students the flexibility to work from anywhere. Teachers are looking forward to utilising even more of the remote working features, including full migration onto Google Classrooms, once all file management is moved onto the cloud."