EdViCon Presents Portable Video-Conferencing Toolkits at 9th EAI International Conference on Design, Learning & Innovation, 2024
The 9th EAI International Conference on Design, Learning & Innovation took place in Halmstad, Sweden, 7th and 8th November, 2024. On behalf of the EdViCon consortium partner Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Tord Talmo and Robin Støckert engaged in EDUCERE, a network of Nordic Universities, that had an own track at DLI24, arranging four workshops for the participants on the 8th November. For the first time, the conference decided only weeks in advance to move the conference to an online format, making it more difficult to arrange the workshops in a hybrid format. Because of the work done in EdViCon, with ideating portable video conference systems, NTNU offered to bring a modified version of our toolkit 1 presented in Malaysia May 2024, and thus help making the workshops more interactive and engaging. This serves as an example of the flexibility in the toolkits being created by EdViCon, the advantages with designing for portability and the added potential pedagogically when doing online presentations and workshops.
In order to support workshops running at the same time in different physical room with remote participants (hybrid) we made two types of setups, based on the core components suggested in the toolkits. The first setup contained two cameras, and a PC connected to a video mixer, making it possible to switch between sources, and also creates fades, closeups, picture in picture etc. The video mixing was done live during the workshops and delivered a professional production directly into the videoconference. The mixer has a USB output and act as a USB-camera connected to the conference PC. The sound was collected through a Jabra microphone placed between the speakers in the room. Audio and video was also sent to the local AV-system in the room, giving the local audience a good immersive experience.
The other parallel workshop was set up as a self-running system, with wireless microphones for the workshop’s speakers and an AI-camera with automated tracking, both connected to the conference pc. This system provided the freedom for the workshop speakers to freely walk around, and still be in the camera view. The conference PC was in addition sent to the local AV-system in the room, for a more complete experience.
In the pictures, you can see the VC being set up and tested before the workshop begins.
