Gettysburg College
Leveraging Panasonic’s AV Technology to Enhance Student Engagement
Challenges
Like many colleges looking to communicate more effectively with students, Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA needed the tools to share course materials and school updates with students in an engaging way.
The college also wanted to ensure any AV technology investment they made would be cost-effective longterm, while meeting the needs for both in-person and remote learning situations. With the previous lamp based projectors in place, the college’s IT budget dedicated $10,000-15,000 each year on projector lamps alone, just to ensure projector maintenance. Moving forward, Gettysburg’s IT department needed to find a new solution to effectively disseminate information while requiring minimum upkeep and prudent ongoing investment.
Solutions
Gettysburg College turned to Panasonic’s laser projectors to enhance their learning environments for students and professors. Throughout its classrooms, the team deployed 12 PT-VMZ50U 3LCD portable laser projectors as well as 14 PT-RZ570U 1-Chip DLP® SOLID SHINE laser projectors to ensure engaging visuals were possible during each lesson, whether they were in-person or streamed from the classroom to remote students.
In addition to providing enhanced picture quality, by switching most existing projectors to these laser models, the IT team significantly reduced its lamp budget by approximately 93%.
“Not only do Panasonic’s laser projectors reduce our lamp budgets drastically, but they also have versatile throw distances and enable a fairly close proximity zoom, enabling content to be crisp and clear for our students,” said Travis Mathna, AV integration & support at Gettysburg College. “With the addition of new, permanent projectors for individual classrooms, we no longer need to move the projectors between classrooms and recalibrate them each time, saving us significant energy and manpower that can be used for other purposes.”
Gettysburg College also deployed 40 Panasonic 4K professional displays throughout its athletic center, student union, dining halls and meeting rooms. With these powerful displays, Gettysburg College can easily share important information throughout the campus including upcoming student events and dining menus while students can use the displays for group work projects or entertainment such as video games. In preparation of having students on campus during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gettysburg developed 12 new teaching spaces to further enhance social distancing and equipped those spaces with a variety of Panasonic’s 4K professional displays including TH-55EQ1U, TH-86CQ1U and TH-75CQ1U models.
Results
Due to a long, established relationship with Panasonic, the Gettysburg team knew Panasonic was the right choice for its recent tech upgrade. As learning environments require continuous new visual technology, Gettysburg was able to upgrade its existing projectors along with deploying more professional displays throughout campus to facilitate learning, collaboration and efficient information sharing.
Using Panasonic’s PT-VMZ50U and PT-RZ570U laser projectors, professors are able to display lessons and class information with bright, color-accurate visuals. This facilitates traditional classroom learning, but is particularly important for hybrid and remote learning as well: By streaming a lesson from a professor’s classroom to remote students, the professor has more flexibility with the content he or she shares while students will be able to clearly see the information due to the crisp, easy-to-read visuals the projectors produce. In addition to using the projectors for lessons, they have also helped the school create safe, socially-distanced outdoor gatherings.
Similarly, Panasonic’s professional displays have ensured key information is easily disseminated throughout the campus. This includes new safety procedures, important updates around student events and even access to graduation ceremonies for overflow guests. At the same time, students have access to the displays to facilitate collaborative work or to unwind with video games in the college’s game room.
Creating a Sense of Community
After evaluating the best ways to share critical information with students, whether it be class material, dining hall menus or pertinent information regarding new safety procedures and extracurricular activities, Gettysburg College’s IT team selected Panasonic’s laser projectors and professional display technology. This technology investment was made with the college’s short- and long-term goals for student engagement, safety and budget in mind. Now, Gettysburg College is able to support remote learning, facilitate information sharing throughout the campus and create socially-distant events bringing the campus community together safely.
“College students today are facing so many challenges as they head back to school, and it was important for us as an institution to provide those returning to campus with a sense of normalcy in a safe way,” said Rodney Tosten, vice president of information technology, Gettysburg College. “By leveraging projectors from Panasonic, we’ve been able to offer our students the opportunity to watch TV together, in a socially-distanced space outside on our campus. With so much going on, it’s been great to use technology to not only support student learning, but to give them the sense of community they so often look for when coming to campus.”
While the PT-RZ570U fixed installation projectors facilitated lessons, the PT-VMZ50U projectors’ portability allowed the college to bring students together outdoors. With just the projector(s), a tent, internet connection and power extension cable, the IT team could easily create a socially-distanced space where students can enjoy the simple pleasure of gathering to watch weekly football games or reality television shows.
At Gettysburg College, Panasonic’s AV technology is fostering the next normal of higher education to bring together students and faculty in and out of the classroom.
