Edith Cowan University (ECU) is a major Australian university that has invested significantly in its new A$852m city campus in Perth. The campus features a wide range of general learning areas, including flat-floor rooms with reconfigurable furniture, collaborative theatres and varied meeting pods. These spaces are designed for modern, flexible teaching where lecturers can move freely among students and hybrid participation is treated as equal rather than an afterthought.

 

Chris Cooper from ECU’s Digital Services Collaboration team was embedded in the project for three years and worked closely with integrator Vizcom Technologies to deliver a consistent learning experience across hundreds of different spaces.

 

 

 

ECU’s teaching philosophy prioritises mobility and collaboration. Lecturers act as facilitators who roam the room rather than remaining fixed at a lectern. At the same time, the university was determined that online students should never feel like “poor cousins”.

 

This created clear audio challenges:

An 18-month pilot at ECU’s Joondalup campus confirmed that any solution had to be both high-performing and simple for academic staff to use day-to-day.

 

 

 

Sennheiser TeamConnect Ceiling 2 (TCC 2) and TeamConnect Ceiling M (TCC M) microphone arrays were selected as the core speech-capture solution across the learning spaces.

 

The arrays provide comprehensive, natural-sounding coverage so lecturers can teach from any position in the room while remaining clearly audible to both in-room and remote participants. Meanwhile, for the integrator, Vizcom, Sennheiser’s Control Cockpit software proved decisive during the large-scale commissioning phase. Its visual lobe-mapping tools allowed the team to set priority zones (including individual student pods), verify coverage in real time, and quickly refine pickup even in noisy construction conditions.

 

David Jones, Director of Vizcom Technologies, notes: “Sennheiser’s Control Cockpit proved to be the difference – we chose TeamConnect as the preferred platform. When you have around 120 ceiling mic arrays on site, it was Control Cockpit that saved us so much time in the commissioning phase.”

 

Chris Cooper adds: “The ceiling microphones were essential to ensure that staff could wander anywhere in the room and be picked up in the Teams call or a recording.”

 

Voice lift (mix-minus) processing was implemented so that a quiet question asked near the lecturer, for example, is reinforced for the far side of the room and cleanly captured for recordings and remote participants, while levels remain natural closer to the source. Low and high voice lift presets are available on the room touch panels to suit different speaking styles. Priority zones can also be selected so that a chosen student pod becomes the primary focus of the array.

 

For situations requiring additional mobility or higher gain, Sennheiser EW-DX wireless handheld and belt-pack systems are installed in essentially every teaching space. The EW-DX series was specifically chosen for its narrow bandwidth and high channel density. This spectrum efficiency allows a large number of reliable channels to be managed across the campus while minimising the risk of interference through glass and plasterboard walls, and from external events in nearby public spaces. Network connectivity further supports monitoring and long-term manageability of the wireless inventory.

 

The Sennheiser microphones integrate into a broader networked AV environment (Crestron control and DM NVX, Q-SYS audio processing, Lightware USB-C connectivity), but remain the critical element that makes truly mobile, hybrid-capable teaching possible.

 

 

 

The city campus installation has become the standard for ECU’s other sites. Lecturers can move freely, students can contribute from anywhere, and remote participants receive clear, intelligible audio. Support issues related to microphone use have remained low because the system simply works.

 

By placing high-quality, flexible speech capture at the centre of the design, ECU has created learning spaces that prioritise teaching and learning rather than technology for its own sake.

 

“The ceiling microphones were essential to ensure that staff could wander anywhere in the room and be picked up in the Teams call or a recording.”  

— Chris Cooper, Digital Services Collaboration, Edith Cowan University

 

“When you have around 120 ceiling mic arrays on site, it was Control Cockpit that saved us so much time in the commissioning phase.”  

— David Jones, Director, Vizcom Technologies