Transforming from Audio Visual to Interactive Technologies at

Massey University, NZ

Or: who does Sue Tait think she is removing the OHPs

from the lecture theatres?

Past, Present, Future • This is not a technical presentation; it tells the story of all the other

fundamental building blocks required to transform the Massey AV architecture

• This presentation is about how critical it was to academically, financially, and culturally enable a technical transformation to a sustainable, adaptable, fully digital Audio Visual infrastructure led by ITS, Massey University, New Zealand

• Our road to transform to Interactive Technologies has

always been values led …• To celebrate, respect and learn from the past• To make, adapt & deliver as expected in the present• To plan, research and look forward to the future

Celebrate our past

Make lessons learned easy to own

• We can’t transform on a shoe string

• We can’t get T&L funding without an academic mandate

• We can’t get an academic mandate without trust

• We can’t get trust without earning it

• We can keep earning trust with continuous improvement within the constraints of budgets and different needs for shared spaces

• We can accept that institutional change can take a long time … but that it can happen … with a will and a way

Capture the good stuff

The Curly but Controlled project management path

Build or Beg for Fundamental ToolsDatabase – suppliers can report on non private fieldsOnline repositories – SP @ Massey

Make and Publish Plans and Progress 10 Year and Detailed Annual Plans - on Massey SharePoint Site

Project Dashboard – with links to support handover

Identify the key agents of change

For us at Massey, to transform audio visual, the ABCs were …

• Academic mandate

• Budget

• Cultural change

Underpinned by - professional relationships and growing capability …

• NZ Universities Audio Visual monthly video conferencing meetings

• Massey, NZ, Oz study tours, site visits, research and evaluation

• Professional groups; notably AETM Infocomm & PD opportunities

Academic mandate & Shared Services collaborationFor control, governance and direction …

• Teaching Space Technologies Project Board established 2013

• Learning Spaces Steering Committee established 2015

• Learning Spaces Plan established 2017

Budget - $$$ - stakeholders and sponsorsCrestron sponsorship for first Teaching

Room Development space in 2016University Capital Plan Bids

... aligned with ITS KPIs …(and made sure we met them!)

… significant budget increase in 2014

Cultural change – values led

ITS Planning and Transformation Interactive Technologies Values …

• Respectful; understanding the different needs of our stakeholders, customers, colleagues and ourselves

• Responsive; collaborative, timely, requirements driven, open to lessons learned

• Robust; fit for purpose, cost effective, sustainable and aligned with our design guidelines

• Reliable; timely delivery of high quality, dependable services

• Repeatable; consistent services which provide a familiar experience

Make it happen

Get the resources you need … in our case the top two are …

• A qualified team of specialist, technical project managers

• Crestron, Prince2, AETM, staff with tertiary quals plus NW and AV

• Next … higher levels of the above and T&L qualifications

• A sustainable budget

• We persisted until our annual AV refresh budget (to transform and then continue to enhance driven by pedagogy) was increased from 8% to 20% of the fleets capital value; that is, we now have a sustainable 5 year average EOL refresh cycle instead of 12.5 years!

• Next … other interactive technologies refresh budgets

Collaboration with suppliers and partners

• Massey University established our first Interactive Technologies Preferred Supplier Panel for projects and support in January 2015

• FM still refurbish rooms and build event lecterns. The ITS AV Refresh project took responsibility for basic lectern builds in late 2016

Don’t get in the way of the technical leads

• They know what they are doing .. they own the technical change

Critical Mass and Standard Configurable Code

• The new standard touch panel designs went through an iterative improvement process in 2016; but really - built by committee!

• For the start of 2017 these standard designs for single or dual projection rooms could have additional modules applied to add optional extra functionality such as lecture recording, video linked teaching or collaborative for problem based learning spaces; but cluttered

• By Easter 2017 our new AV infrastructure and designs had been applied to over 50% of the shared general teaching rooms; and rooms with earlier iterations could easily be re-refreshed with the latest code; big win

• In mid 2017 we applied the acid test to our latest designs by inviting a Crestron certified supplier to run them through the standard configurable code they had developed for Australian Universities; huge endorsement!

Our transformation is all but complete• We now have over 50% of our rooms transformed to the new Crestron Digital Media based AV infrastructure

• Based on that, we now have academic user, external and internal support team commitment to adopting standard, configurable code; following the success of our transformation rollout to date

• Based on that, just this week we got project and governance board funding approval to develop and pilot standard configurable Crestron code on all Massey campuses in November 2017

What does success look like …

• We have standard designs that can be applied to configurable code

• We have increased our team skills and responsibilities and fun!

• We have brought our planning month forward from Dec to Sept (way less stress)

• We have increased our budget from 8% to 20% of total fleet value

• We have academic governance, control and user feedback forums

• We have plans and tools that can adapt to expand our service

• We are getting more and more requests to consult on Uni projects

• We are getting invited to sit at the table at the design concept stage

• We are proud to be a trusted, valued partner; keen to keep improving

In summary – the timeline was long but worth it …• 2012: with no budget, no asset database, no project plan and no academic mandate to transform, we started with an internal

team review of our technical guidelines, processes and systems

• 2013: we put our hands up to be the first early adopters of SharePoint to publish our project plans and project libraries and to the subject of a SQL DB evaluation trial to get our assets our of a spreadsheet,

• 2014: we won our case to the AV Refresh budget was increased to a sustainable 20% of the AV fleet value and established the Teaching Space Technologies project board with appropriate academic, shared services and campus representation

• 2015: we established the first preferred supplier panel for AV and other interactive technologies at Massey and got all the team Crestron and Prince2 Project Management certified

• 2016 was a big year …

• the Learning Space Steering Committee was established as a governance body chaired by the Assistant VC for Teaching and Learning and Research; LSSC developed the first ever Learning Spaces Plan at Massey

• our ITS Int Tech team was increased to include 1 senior technical lead, 2 technical leads and 1 technical project manager

• we took ownership of the lectern build from facilities management to standardise and speed up our deployment cycle

• we transformed the user interface on the lectern AV control panel generated from our new standard AV technical designs supported by our academics, project and governance boards; this interim design was a key lead to the final steps in 2017

• 2017 has been another big year …

• we attained the penultimate milestone of rolling out our new standard designs to all new and refreshed teaching and learning spaces and having them received as BAU by our academics

• we received support to proceed to the final stage of our transformation milestone; to adopt standard, configurable Crestron code, Fusion and a new TP design to integrate, control, monitor and remotely support our new Crestron DM AV

What next … do it .. continuous improvement• Deploy our first end to end transformed AV infrastructure from sem one 2018

• Retrofit earlier iterations to bring all transformed rooms up to the same standard by end of 2018

• Complete our AV transformation of all ITS supported spaces by the start of 2020

• Improve it … and improve it again

• And never stop asking .. what next?

So – Q&A and feedback time …

What could, should we do better? What could, should we do next?

Thank you!

Sue Tait (E: s.j.tait@massey.ac.nz M: +64 21 937 484)