Working for the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) and in particular Abu Dhabi men’s college is completely different to anything else I’ve experienced before. We get visitors from world-leading educationalists, sporting stars, politicians, members of worldwide organizations such as WHO and UNESCO, and celebrities. Al Rawi is the corporate news letter from the HCT and contains under the heading of HCT Successes contains an article about one of the main parts of my job visitors. Some of the people I have had the pleasure of meeting include a delegation from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, MIT senior entrepreneurship lecturer John Preston, Microsoft’s Craig Mundie, Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorp, University of Chicago President Robert J Zimmer and UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokovaust to name a few. This is what the article said:
“Hugely impressed with the standards of education and facilities on offer at the campuses, the guests have all been eager to see how the HCT model operates so successfully in eLearning, education technologies, research and training; and to hopefully to work collaboratively with the HCT to develop, produce and deliver cutting-edge programs in the UAE and their home institutions and countries.
Moreover, during their tours the guests gain knowledge and a clear insight into how advanced HCT’s philosophy is in delivery best practices education in a technologically advanced mode with emphasis on eLearning in a wireless environment. Many of these visits have resulted in partnerships, joint ventures and memoranda of understanding being entered into for the future benefit of HCT students and the advancement of facilities at the College campuses.”
An Arabic newspaper based in Dubai has asked the college for an article based on the Classroom capture pilot project we have been running at the College. I’m not sure if it’s going to get published or not but thought it was informative enough to put on here.
Capturing great teaching
Abu Dhabi Men’s College is always striving to improve teaching and learning at the College using the latest technology and academic research to enhance to student experiences. Creating a way for staff to capture the high quality teaching that they do was a high priority to the College. Looking at how other Universities and College around the world where doing this and assessing their strengths and weaknesses the College came up with cutting edge concept that makes the controls as simple as possible yet has multiple cameras capturing the whole classroom environment in the most natural way possible.
The College setup a classroom installed with six high definition cameras around the room, three on the walls front, back and one side wall. The others are in the ceiling above the front desk, one document camera and the final one capturing the screen all in high definition. Other equipment includes six directional microphones; pressure sensitive mats; a control system and video recorder complete the setup.
This is all controlled through an automatic intuitive control system that uses the pressure sensitive mats on the floor and the directional microphones to work out where the center of attention is and records that. The system is all controlled through a very simple wireless control panel. With the simple press of two buttons the system will start recording the teacher. Two more buttons and any students talking will be filmed. Any recordings can be professionally edited or just left as they are and then uploaded to the Colleges media streaming server for students to access. There is also the option to broadcast the live feed over the internet for people to watch from anywhere in the world.
All this technology combines to make the highest quality recordings with the simplest setup and controls possible today. Giving students access to watch revision and reminder video’s of key topics in their subjects.
