Higher Education Solutions: How Request to Speak Discussion Systems Are Increasing Productivity in the Classroom and the Boardroom

Classrooms in Higher Education are growing larger, and have been for some time. The ratio of students to teachers in these classrooms are such that the instructors are facing an inverse problem where the greater the amount of students the lower the attentiveness of each student becomes. At the same time the Boards of Trustees are looking for ways to increase the efficiency of their meetings in order to create and promote policies to address the issues affecting their schools. In short, both the instructors and the boards are feeling the pressure to create more with less, to be able to solve their problems without spending money on increased faculty or construction.

So how does everyone else do it?

Request to Speak Discussion Systems have been used in a variety of applications and are better known for their use in Corporate Facilities and Council Chambers. But as the cost of technology has dropped and the needs of Higher Education have increased, Request to Speak Discussion Systems have become a popular solution to the issues facing both the classroom and the boardroom.

What is a Request-to-Speak System?
In a very basic sense, a Request to Speak Discussion System in the classroom is an intuitive method for distributing the voice of the instructor to the students via small, built-in speakers at each student position and allow for the students to become involved in the discussion via small, built-in microphones at each student position. That being stated, the primary advantage of the Request to Speak Discussion System is the ability to increase intelligibility for each student no matter how large the classroom becomes or how many students are in that classroom.

For the Board of Trustees a fully functional Request to Speak Discussion System, including electronic voting, camera follow audio, and digital recording for web-streaming or archiving, allows each member of the board a clearly defined method for communicating with one another so that everyone can hear what is being said, everyone can understand what they are voting on, everyone can see what the vote result was, and everyone can easily distribute the new information to the faculty, student population, and citizens as necessary. The addition of Camera Follow Audio means that the meetings can be recorded without the need of a camera operator, or if needed can be interfaced with a video conferencing system allowing members of the board who are not able to meet in the same location can still add their input to the meeting.

The voting process that is present in the solution for the Boardroom can also be added as an option to the solution for the classroom. By doing so, the Request to Speak Discussion System can now be utilized as a sophisticated and accurate Audience Response System; a system that will allow an instructor to present quizzes or tests and generate reports listing the student's name with their response for each question.

Why Choose a Request-to-Speak System?
The benefits of using a Request to Speak Discussion System are many and yet the cost of installing and maintaining a system are low. Students can hear their instructors as if they were right there next to them and still be able to share their ideas with the entire class without feeling like they need to shout. Board Members will benefit from the same technology and with electronic voting are able to define their goals quickly and distribute the outcomes of each meeting faster.

In short, a Request to Speak Discussion system will allow Higher Education to do more with less.

About the Author:
Wesley Sutliff is Product Manager of Media Vision USA, the Diplomacy Technology Solution provider in North America including audio conferencing, electronic voting, and simultaneous interpretation solutions for council chambers, courtrooms, boardrooms, and videoconferencing applications