Prior to the pandemic, most schools in Australia had digital whiteboards or interactive projectors installed already. However, ViewSonic believes that the level of participation and engagement was dependent on students going to the board and writing on it like it is no different from old-school whiteboards.
When COVID-19 first broke out, the demand for online learning increased. Schools and students had no choice but to utilise old technology to conduct online learning, putting teachers at a disadvantage.
Today, digital teaching is not a new concept in education, but the demand and necessity for it in the wake of the pandemic was something no educational institution could have foreseen. Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU) in Taiwan was no different, with the university utilising online teaching for years through pre-recorded videos for students to learn asynchronously and remotely.
However, teachers ran into difficulties with these programs as pre-recorded course materials were time consuming, inflexible, lacked interactivity, and did not cater for differing levels of students.
To meet this challenge, CYCU installed and implemented a hybrid classroom on campus. The key factor being to give equal weight to in-class and remote learners by fully integrating online teaching into the physical classroom, where teachers could use their established teaching methods and interact with both remote and in-class students simultaneously.
ViewSonic has developed a solution about how to deal with students going back to school and further incorporate a hybrid classroom.
A successful hybrid classroom is built on a combination of hardware and software designed to seamlessly integrate the physical and digital into one cohesive teaching environment.
At the heart of the hybrid classroom solution is a large interactive touch display embedded with digital white boarding software that allows teachers to present, annotate, and collaborate on the display in real-time in such a way that is easily viewable by in-person and remote students.
“It is unclear when the pandemic will end. What we fathom from this experience is that hybrid learning will likely become mainstream, and schools need to safeguard the quality of teaching by quickly adapting and supporting the ever changing learning environment, the needs of students, and the roles of teachers and parents in learning,” says Jack Hung, Country Manager of ViewSonic Australia.
As a result, ViewSonic successfully developed a hybrid teaching classroom designed to meet the needs of teachers and students.
At the height of the pandemic, ViewSonic partnered with Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan to establish the world’s first ViewSonic Hybrid Teaching Classroom.
The classroom was built to meet the demands of all types of education – starting with Chung Yuan Christian University’s Department of Teaching Chinese as a second language.
“The core goal of hybrid classrooms is to achieve a similar experience and outcome among learners and students in and out of the classrooms,” says Hung.
ViewSonic’s hybrid classroom cuts the need to pre-record lessons and allows teachers and students to effectively communicate and interact with everybody, online and offline, real-time.
With ViewSonic’s EdTech solutions, the school, teachers, and students can adapt to remote teaching in a more intuitive and easy way and keep education uninterrupted.
Key aspects of the hybrid teaching classroom includes the ViewBoard interactive display, which is an 86-inch interactive display is installed at the front of the classroom. The 4K ultra-HD display helps teachers capture students’ attention by presenting lessons and videos in vivid colours; scribbling notes over blank canvas or any media; and creating dynamic lessons using myViewBoard.
With certified eye-care technology, teachers and students can avoid straining their eyes while looking at the display for a long time.
The latest ViewBoard 52 Series of interactive flat panels for education is equipped with user-centric design features and collaboration tools for today’s learning.
Featuring a multimedia soundbar offering better audio-quality especially with special effects sound, it also has 8-mic array that comes very handy when recording or transmitting voice in the classroom or livestream.
For information visit: ViewSonic.