The 500-acre Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) is home to 20,000 students across 300 degree programs in eight undergraduate colleges, of which an estimated 80 percent of the student body attend classes in-person. Nevertheless, all classes are recorded and streamed for remote and hybrid participants via Panopto, making audio quality for all students, interoperability, and ease of use for faculty, key considerations for the AV and IT staff at the university.
After a few years of remote and hybrid classes, leveraging a camera and lanyard-style lavalier microphone for all classrooms, James Copeland, director of classroom technology at MTSU and his team realized they needed a better solution. “We quickly felt the pain of using battery-powered mics,” Copeland said. “There were issues with having the batteries regularly charged, so professors would come in and they couldn’t record their lecture because the mic was drained. If a class was over Zoom, the students couldn’t hear anything, so it was like the class wasn’t even happening.”
