The University of Edinburgh

Overview

Founded in 1583, the University of Edinburgh is ranked as one of the top 20 universities in the world. As a world-leading centre of academic excellence, the University aims to provide the highest quality learning and teaching environments for their student community, in accordance with their mission, to create, disseminate and curate knowledge.

The challenge

Following a national student survey which highlighted that improvements in technology adoption could be made, Stephen Dishon, Development Team Manager at the University of Edinburgh, embarked on an initiative to enhance teaching facilities across the University campus. “The student experience is paramount to us here at the University and our students are driving technology adoption here at the University. Learning through collaboration is particularly important to our students and we need to ensure that we create the right environment to enable this.”
Originally, Stephen and his team didn’t think that interactive displays were a consideration for the University, looking instead to deploy non-interactive LED displays across the campus.
“We have had interactive displays across our estate for a while, however, our academics hadn’t embraced the technology, citing difficulties with writing and annotations and we were reluctant to go down that path again” explains Stephen, “the teaching faculty are a critical factor in technology adoption, so we wanted to choose the right solution for everyone.

The solution

Stephen and his team visited the Avocor stand at the Bett show in January 2016 and were immediately impressed with the simplicity of the F series solution. “We loved the finger point precision of Avocor Intelligent Touch using InGlass, the speed of the display overall was fantastic. The embedded Windows operating platform meant that we could create an environment where our lecturers saw the displays as giant tablets, maximising engagement and return on investment. We also really liked the design of the displays, making them ideal for the modern teaching areas around the University.”

The University is now rolling out Avocor displays across their estate and the reaction has been extremely positive. “There has been a groundswell of good opinion with regards to the Avocor solution, our staff seeing improvements in overall lesson delivery and student engagement.”