By Rebecca V. Frazee and Lisa Stephens of FLEXspace.org, with several guest contributors (noted below).
To browse details, images, floor plans and more from spaces featured in this column, plus hundreds more, login to FLEXspace.org and visit the Gallery “FEATURED IN HIGHER ED AV MAGAZINE.”
AV over IP, Not Your Dad’s Chevy…
An AV-IT “Houston, We Have a Problem” Moment
“Hi, Lisa – we’ve had a breach.” “Huh?” “Your IMUX to the bridge got hacked.” “What does that mean?” “It tripped an intrusion alarm, and we’ll need to re-configure the firewall to…”
Enter eyes glazing over. Not out of boredom, hostility or frustration… It just suddenly felt like asking for directions in French while lost in Mexico. This incident is a long-ago memory, but the premise remains. The signal paths for cameras, mics, and content displays – the “goes-intas” and “goes-outtas” of the past – have been redefined by digital innovations leading toward network convergence.
It wasn’t that long ago when conference-colleague-conversations would drift to, “Is IT eating AV for lunch?” Higher education, like corporations, occasionally experience pendulum swings from centralized to decentralized efforts as evidenced by departmental reorgs and budget shifts, but there is no longer an argument to be had whether AV will be migrating to IT networks. Commercial Integrator published AV-as-a-Service Requires You to Speak IT’s Language outlining many of the issues resulting from this ongoing migration.
Is AV to IP Migration A Problem?
In so many ways this is terrific! Networks already exist in classrooms for obvious academic needs, campus bandwidth is expanding and BYOD is being reckoned with… all sorts of exciting teaching options are to be had!
What trips up many instructional technologists and classroom managers is the level of robust infrastructure required outside of our native understanding. AV environments are, traditionally, relatively closed, and readily diagnosable when problems crop up. If a device is faulty, it’s swapped out. Larger pieces of production equipment rarely fail and require little diagnostic work. But add a network into the mix and if (more likely “when”) signal quality suffers, the tried-and-true diagnostic routines now require network engineers to look into the back-end signal transport to find the source of out-of-sync audio or video.
This is where good relationships between AV and IT really pay off, our AV staff has a tough job that is made more challenging through loss of problem solving autonomy. The challenge for network folks is understanding the urgency most of us in the AV world have to deal with: a faculty member within earshot as we describe a problem, or a video editor on deadline cursing when the cloud based software becomes unresponsive. We’ve all experienced the network groaning the minute students return to campus after a break and start downloading videos on infrastructure that was never intended to handle that load. And your Esports network? For sure that needs to be isolated from the rest of us doing work!
Network Security Basics
“You just hit the nail on the head!” said Kevin Cleary, Chief Information Security Officer for the University at Buffalo. “That’s one of the issues I talk about in my class all the time. The key to network security is isolation, or better described as segmentation.”
Let’s get back to that breach. There’s real risk of network devices being used as a “back door” into networks. The IMUX on our H.323 video conference bridge was the early sentinel to the consumer world discovering their home alarm systems can be hacked. It’s taken years for those of us living in the audiovisual world to understand the real threat and responsibility our network colleagues are charged with. Kevin continued, “It’s not just the traditional computer-driven devices. It’s the HVAC systems, or anything that’s IoT (Internet of Things) based. We are working to get similar types of devices segmented onto networks where they have a lot in common – like the AV over IP you’re describing. Whether it’s wireless or hard wired, we know that course content is critical, and audio/video sources require advanced levels of network priority.”
(Left) It now takes a lot less rack space to manage AV over IP for a 200 seat classroom (Right)
The teaching and learning options available over the network are providing a lot of excitement, head scratching and investigating – and it’s all good stuff in supporting our students!
Want to contribute to the FLEXspace Community?
The growing FLEXspace community is always looking for the latest examples of innovative and effective learning spaces. Please share your campus spaces by logging into FLEXspace.org, and contact Rebecca or Lisa if you would like to be featured in an upcoming issue of Higher Ed AV magazine.
BIOS
The FLEXspace Team
LISA STEPHENS, Ph.D.
Assistant Dean, Digital & Online Education
School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, The University at Buffalo
Project Director, FLEXspace.org
Lisa serves as Assistant Dean at the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences leading the Office of Digital & Online Education, and also serves as Senior Strategist for Academic Innovation in the Office of the SUNY Provost. She enjoys an appointment in the UB Department of Communication as an Adjunct Associate Professor. Her SUNY portfolio includes leadership of FLEXspace.org™ and serves as the SUNY Partner Manager for Coursera.
REBECCA V. FRAZEE, EdD
Faculty, Learning Design & Technology Program
San Diego State University
Associate Director, FLEXspace.org
Rebecca teaches in the Learning Design and Technology program at San Diego State University and is the FLEXspace.org Manager. She enjoys experimenting with new technology tools and techniques to support active learning and team collaboration in higher ed and the workplace. Rebecca is a singer and songwriter and has been having fun with asynchronous ‘socially distanced’ recording projects this year. Contact Rebecca at rfrazee@sdsu.edu, and Twitter at @rebeccafrazee.
The Flexible Learning Environments eXchange (FLEXspace.org) is an award winning community and open digital repository for higher ed that houses a growing collection of user-contributed content “by campuses for campuses,” with detailed examples of formal and informal learning spaces ranging from multimedia studios, makerspaces, computer labs, hybrid/flexible classrooms, and huddle spaces to large exhibit spaces, simulation labs and renovated lecture halls. FLEXspace was launched in 2012 as a collaboration between SUNY, the CSU Cal State University system, and Foothill-DeAnza Community College District and has since grown to include over 5000 members from 1400 campuses around the world, with PennState joining the partnership in 2019. FLEXspace won the Campus Technology Innovators Award in 2016, and the California Higher Education (CHEC) Collaborative Conference Focus on Efficiency Award in 2018.
FLEXspace users include practitioners, experts and decision makers in higher education, K-12, libraries, and museums who are focused on campus planning and facilities, learning technology, A/V systems integration, instructional design, teaching, and research. The FLEXspace portal provides a sophisticated suite of features that enables users to document and showcase their own campus learning spaces, share research, best practices and tools for planning.