From its earliest days (founded in 1972), Macquarie University’s Law School has sought to express its desire to be a ‘different kind of law school’ through innovative teaching and learning practices.

 

The Law School’s commitment to innovation is evident in its recently-opened new home: the Michael Kirby Building – named after eminent Australian jurist.

 

The 8,600sqm Michael Kirby Building was constructed atop the foundations of the original Law School building. The impressive timber-constructed atrium is surrounded by the working spaces of the Law School: lecture theatres, specialist teaching and learning facilities, academic offices, the Law Commons (a place for students to study and collaborate) and the Moot Court.

 

 

 

The building’s planning and construction spanned the years impacted by Covid-19, and this is especially evident in the audiovisual systems that are designed to accommodate on-site, remote, real-time and asynchronous participation in the school’s teaching and learning.

 

Sydney’s Concept AV Australia took on the challenge of installing the building’s AV systems. Customer Solutions Specialist Adrian Caltabiano was on site from day one, and explains some of the key drivers. “The design objectives for this project were strongly influenced by Covid-19. Flexibility was key. The AV systems had to support traditional approaches to teaching, and also be agile and adaptable to allow students to participate remotely, in real-time and through the university’s capture and replay platform. And all of this flexibility had to be easy and intuitive for students and staff to operate.”

 

 

 

The Moot Court is a space in which students engage in scenarios that closely simulate a real-world court appearance. The AV systems in the space serve a dual purpose: they provide hands-on experience of the technology that students might expect to encounter in contemporary courtrooms across Australia, and they also facilitate practice for and participation in international mooting events.

 

The Moot Court features Sennheiser’s TeamConnect Ceiling 2 (TCC 2) beamforming ceiling microphones to provide clean audio capture from anywhere in the room. The TCC 2 microphones use advanced algorithms to mix the sound received by 28 microphone capsules to form dynamic pickup beams that focus on and track people speaking in the court, while rejecting background and non-speech sounds.

 

Sennheiser SpeechLine Digital Wireless microphones are also available in the court, for users who prefer a handheld or lapel mic. The SpeechLine Digital Wireless family is optimised for speech intelligibility for teaching and presentations. Effort required to install and maintain is minimised by Automatic Frequency Management (which scans for free channels on startup) and Automatic Interference Management (which changes channel in the event of interference).

 

Images of Moot Court proceedings are captured by Q-SYS PTZ cameras. Talker position data from the TCC 2 microphones can be used to drive the Q-SYS Automatic Camera Preset Recall plug-in to direct the PTZ cameras to point at the active speaker.

 

Elsewhere in the Michael Kirby Building, Macquarie Law School’s commitment to innovation is displayed in three Active Learning Studios, which support the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) pedagogical approach. As in the Moot Court, Sennheiser TCC 2 beamforming mics capture clear audio from each pod, and a desktop charging dock holds a Sennheiser SpeechLine Digital Wireless microphone for the instructor to use.

 

But what of the end users: Macquarie Law School’s students and staff? David Manna, Technical Officer from the Faculty of Arts (Macquarie Law School sits within the Faculty of Arts), commented that “everything’s performing really well, day in and day out. Students and staff using the rooms find the AV technology to be easy to use. They enjoy being in these spaces day after day.”

 

Andrew Squillaciotti, Operations Manager at Concept AV, is also pleased by the positive verdict delivered by students and staff. “The Michael Kirby Building was a landmark project for Macquarie University and also for Concept AV. We’re pleased to have delivered a complex project that students and staff find easy to use. I’m proud of what our installation team achieved. And I’m confident that with technology partners like Sennheiser, we can continue to deliver positive outcomes like this for Macquarie University and for our other clients.”