Excellence Gateway
Published: 16 September 2009
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) Northwest on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.
Sector relevance: Further education and Sixth Form colleges
Keywords: Improving responsiveness to learners, data, management information system (MIS), health and safety, being healthy, health and wellbeing, management of resources, facilities management, wheelchair user, digital information, touchscreen, plasma screen
Southport College has installed 24 centrally controlled digital information display screens across the College to display a wide range of information.
A user-friendly touchscreen facility has been developed and implemented on two of these screens, enabling students, visitors and staff to select college information they would like to view such as course details, news, events and videos. This information is presented to users in a virtual panel that automatically appears at a height suited to their needs.
Southport College is an independent further education college located in Southport town centre. The College specialises in vocational courses, offering a range of qualifications, including BTECs, NVQs, CACHE awards, City & Guilds qualifications, and the new Advanced Diplomas, in subjects from Hair and Beauty Studies or Forensic Science to Childcare or Games Design and Animation. It also provides part-time and full-time courses to over 3,000 adult learners, many of them are supported by their employers on courses delivered in the workplace.
The challenge for Southport College was a typical one for the sector; how to provide students, visitors and staff with a wide range of easily legible and digestible up-to-date information, and whether information should be important to College life or simply informative and engaging.
Management concerns about confusing noticeboards (containing dated information) led Iain Petrie-Brown, Multimedia and Digital Content Developer at the College, to identify digital signage as a positive alternative. Whilst the use of digital signage is now becoming more mainstream in education (with basic off-the-shelf solutions available), Iain wanted to ensure that the College had a bespoke solution that would be as effective and engaging as possible for its students, staff and visitors.
Having researched suitable hardware and software, Iain created a mock-up onto an existing plasma screen to show how information could be displayed. This was presented to a ‘digital signage steering group' that had been set up to oversee developments before any financial commitment was made; it helped to present a convincing case which resulted in approval for the initial purchase of 22 display screens (two others have been added since).
In the proposal, Iain defined key areas on the display screens to present:
A local AV installer was selected and contracted to mount and connect the Samsung display screens; the MagicInfo Pro screens each have an integrated computer running an embedded version of Microsoft Windows, and so once commissioned have the advantage of requiring only mains power and a network cable link to draw fresh media from the content server.
Using the Samsung MagicInfo Pro system, Iain developed various interfaces for the display screens. He says that this system is ideal as it allows him to customise how and when the information should be drawn in, and how it should be displayed. Scheduling server software enables Iain to display different information on different screens, and to include new screens on the system as they are added.
An innovative aspect of the development was the addition of two portrait format touchscreen displays in the reception area of the College. These utilise U-touch infra-red panels made of hardened glass (that research indicated would be more robust than membrane options) which fit over the front of the Samsung display screens.
Using a combination of HTML, Javascript, XML and Flash, Iain developed a bespoke interface for the touchscreens which allows information to be presented within an interactive panel in whichever part of the screen is touched, and/or dragged up and down. This important aspect was developed to enable all users to view information at a suitable height with ease.
Some ongoing daily input is necessary to continue to make information available on the display screens, including:
Image 1: Portrait-format touchscreen display
Image 2: Portrait format touchscreen display showing interactive panel
Image 3: Landscape format screen displaying news feed and video content
The display screens contents run on a loop to ensure that important information is presented throughout the day to all students, but that images and videos are automatically presented at random intervals to ensure there is no ‘boredom' factor. On the touchscreens this is interrupted and ‘taken over' by users when they touch the screen. Different content is concurrently displayed in separate areas of each screen.
In addition to the types of information originally proposed (College website and BBC news feeds, posters, ‘instant' messages and health information), Iain has added:
The radio station audio is streamed across the network from a software server at 256kbps; Iain has created an embedded audio player on a background content layer (thus invisible to anyone looking at the screen) to reproduce the audio content. Most of the display screens are located in corridor areas, entertaining and informing students when they are waiting to go into classes; however, the radio station audio is broadcast at a low volume, so it does not impact on teaching and learning in classrooms.
The scrolling ‘instant' messages, which relay important, more immediate information to students, appear in a defined area at the top of each display screen. When no instant message is showing, a default message highlighting the availability of College information on the touchscreens is displayed instead.
Iain estimates that, on average, he spends a minimum of the equivalent of a day a week maintaining the system – for example, this could involve converting and adding video content, adding ‘instant' messages, and/or changing the content of individual or groups of screens.
Whilst faculties at the College still have (physical) noticeboards, the digital signage development has transformed the way that short-term/immediate information and generic information is presented.
Students and staff have taken to the display screens even better than predicted. Iain cites the large number of information display requests as a measure of success. Similarly, students have shown their interest and enthusiasm by requesting other types of information; this includes a recent request from media/graphics students asking to showcase their work through the display screens.
Iain highlights three key factors in ensuring success of the digital signage developments:
As a next step, there are plans to introduce further touchscreen displays into the College refectory, to include games (possibly developed by software design students) that can be played using the touchscreen panel. An earlier experiment with games on the existing touchscreens had to be abandoned when it created a bottleneck in the reception area due to their popularity. Iain says that the refectory is the ideal place for these games; apart from being fun for the students he is confident that it will draw them in to generate increased engagement with the display screen content as an excellent method of information dissemination.
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