California’s First Higher Education Institution Stays Ahead of the Remote Learning Curve with Matrox
By Adam Noyes
Remote education and lecture capture are a great place for Matrox devices to further the effectiveness of a broadcast. Educators from Santa Clara University made their shift to remote learning with the Matrox Maevex 6020.
Check out some highlights from this article to learn more.
From mission revival architecture to a revival of classroom AV hardware, Santa Clara University (SCU) has seen many changes since its establishment in 1851. With the early 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, California’s oldest higher education institution was faced with the challenge of making a complete shift to remote learning – and without much warning. Thankfully, SCU’s existing Matrox® Maevex 6020 Remote Recorder appliance and Panopto™ video management system (VMS) lecture capture solution made it easy for the university to integrate Maevex 6020 devices and deploy them quickly across all buildings, allowing SCU students and faculty to transition seamlessly from the classroom to the university’s remote learning platform.
Founded in 1851, SCU is California’s first higher learning institution
Searching for a sustainable solution
In 2016, SCU started using the Panopto VMS in combination with a Windows-based, computer-and-capture card solution that was built, imaged, and maintained by the university’s media systems team. Not only did this solution require a tremendous amount of time to build and maintain in-house, it was also far too labor-intensive to manage with a small staff. Furthermore, unexpected updates and shutdowns of the systems made it particularly difficult for the team to maintain uniformity across devices. Lacking configuration for mass deployment software, the Window-based solution required security and software updates that forced staff to manually update each system one at a time.
Three years later, the team began to realize that this solution was unsustainable in the long term and began to look for alternatives in order to save on time, resources, and cost. A turnkey solution that comes fully integrated with the university’s existing preferred VMS, Maevex 6020 turned out to be the perfect fit. Between the standalone appliance’s ability to function without unexpected operating system updates, its configuration and firmware utility for centralized control of the devices, and its highly competitive price point with no reoccurring licensing fees, Maevex 6020 was a clear choice. According to Joel Bennett, manager of media systems at SCU, Maevex 6020 made a vast difference right away – from integration to deployment. “It is so much simpler,” he said. “Once, the AV installers install the unit, I can do everything from my desk. Before, I would have had staff here, working, building, and installing. Maevex 6020 has significantly reduced our workload.”
Each common classroom and conference room at SCU is equipped with a Maevex 6020 device
Seamless transition to remote learning
While Maevex 6020 was the ideal match for SCU’s streaming and recording needs since it first arrived on campus, its reliability and ease of integration became paramount to the university’s remote learning transition in early 2020. Just after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., the university was able to deploy 60 Maevex 6020 units for a current total of over 100 appliances in just 30 days. Using the intuitive configuration and firmware utility, Maevex 6020 made mass deployment effortless, allowing for the configuration and simultaneous setup of multiple units in record time. Now, every common classroom across all five academic colleges on campus is equipped with a Maevex 6020 device, providing access to streamed classes and lecture capture recordings for the university’s nearly 10,000 students.Maevex 6020 was helpful when we first acquired it, but when the pandemic hit, it became irreplaceable,” said Bennett. “We were able to deploy several recorders in just a small amount of time. I do not think that we could have built and supported that many of our previous solutions in that time period. Matrox allowed us to focus our time and resources on other tasks because everything from the installation to deployment was so simple.”