ICN Berlin is a business school in the heart of Berlin. They were founded in 2019, although their ICN campus in Nancy, France exists already since 1905. They offer master programs in marketing, finance, digital and sustainable innovation management at their Berlin campus. Their students come from all over the world and pick ICN for the Arts Technology Management approach, a transdisciplinary concept that enables students to develop appropriate solutions to current challenges. ICN belongs to the top 1% business schools that have the triple crown (AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS) accreditation and seeks to educate responsible leaders for the future. Together with our integrator Pro Video they created a setup to meet the Covid-19 regulations.
The reason to choose for hybrid education
The pandemic hit ICN Berlin hard and they had to send all their students into virtual classrooms. They usually have small groups in the classroom and do many interactive exercises face to face, but had to meet Covid-19 regulations and switch to virtual or hybrid teaching. They did not only have to rethink their teaching methods, but had to make sure they could still provide high-quality classes, even in distance and getting everyone involved into the class. Therefore, they developed a classroom setting that allowed all students to engage in all activities, no matter if they were in Berlin or elsewhere in the world.
“To work with Avonic was a recommendation of our IT department in Nancy. The university campus is small, and the IT support is still provided by our IT department in France. I was very happy when I got in touch with Avonic that they recommended a local partner (Pro Video) to assess our needs and then suggest a suitable solution of our classrooms. Avonic reserved the estimated equipment for us, because the implementation had to be realized quite short term and Pro Video visited us in the premises to discuss possible solutions with us and avoid any problems in implementation. I was very happy to have this professional and responsive support. We benefited from their expertise in the educational sector and to us it was important to find an easy and affordable solution for our classrooms.”
Lena Scholtke (ICN Berlin)
Product references
CM70-NDI in black
The setup being used
We had to equip three classrooms with a stationary camera fixed on the ceiling in the back of the classroom and one portable one for our external classroom. We used the AV-CM70 pointing to the screen, with the option to focus either on the board or the students in the classroom. the high resolution and the optical zoom allows even students online to read the board and follow the session without problems. Our lecturers usually arrive with their laptops and plug in the camera, open the virtual meeting session and then are ready to start. They are either equipped with dell or hp laptops and use plantronics wireless headsets to be able to hear the contributions of our students who participate virtually. Most professors run a PowerPoint presentation on our Benq smartboards which is then shared in the virtual meeting room. Please find attached an overview of our setup.
The ease of integration and operation
We are working with academic professors and professionals alike, so it was essential that the camera setup and usage was easy and feasibel without any prior knowledge or complicated installation process that would require admin rights. I was surprised, that everything works by just plugging the camera to a USB port at the laptop and it was immediately available. When using the camera application on the laptop, we had brilliant, sharp images. Unfortunately, applications such as zoom or teams, do not stream in the same, high resolution quality.
A closer look at their virtual classroom
