The University of Northampton, one of the oldest universities in the UK, is leading the way in adding value to society. Staff is dedicated to share knowledge, support creativity and help students to make changes that will transform their lives. It recently invested in Waterside, a brand new campus, fully designed to adapt to 21st century teaching with a full range of integrated and also smaller learning environments. The choice to integrate both Barco’s weConnect and Overture solutions on this teaching focused campus is completely in line with their vision on innovative and engaging experiences in Higher Education. A perfect match with the solutions from Barco Education designed specifically for the educational market to enhance teaching and learning experiences within and beyond the classroom.
The University of Northampton focuses strongly on student participation in their teaching methods. Therefore they are highly advanced in the way they run their teaching and keen on integrating technologies that enable blended teaching for example. Barco Education partnered up with the University of Northampton to create a campus-wide solution that enables more collaborative teaching and learning, weConnect, a cloud-based SaaS solution, and is easy to maintain and manage at the same time with Overture, a campus-wide A/V all-in-one monitoring and control solution. Creating value for both teaching staff and IT department, the combination of both weConnect and Overture solutions proved to be the perfect fit and installs were realized in no less than 168 classrooms, 24 huddle spaces, 81 interactive classrooms, 35 connected classrooms, 23 collaboration rooms and 5 lecture halls.
Moving away from traditional teaching
On a teaching focused campus like the University of Northampton the staff’s attention is mainly on making students part of discussions and involving them highly in the teaching and learning process. With Barco’s weConnect collaborative solution, student engagement in classrooms and lecture halls is higher and graduates can be prepared for their future jobs by helping them obtain skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, emotional intelligence… Professor Alejandro Armellini comments: “We want to innovate in the way we run our teaching, in the experience of students in and outside the classroom. We want good teaching to translate into the best opportunities possible for our students when they graduate.”
Easy-to-use, straightforward tech enables professors to move out of the traditional practise to the role of university tutors. Interactivity features like polling, quizzes, silent questions enable blended learning and revolve around making students content creators and knowledge sharers. Dr. Holger Siemons, Associate Professor adds: “weConnect helps me to renovate my teaching approaches, to be more curious about new topics and it gives me immediate feedback from students. You can really build a culture of participation.”
weConnect and Overture: the perfect match for our campus
“Millennials expect a different type of learning experience. We’re looking for technologies that allow us to serve up our teaching on demand, be scalable and flexible. weConnect gives us the collaborative classroom experience and the wireless screen sharing experience. Overture underpins all of that as a third party control system that is highly customizable.” Digital Integration Lead, Andrew Taylor is convinced of the combination of both solutions for their campus. Easy-to-manage and maintain solutions deliver a uniform user experience for all rooms on campus. “ It takes away some of the cognitive load of our lecturers, there are no more control panels and we can automate equipment. In addition to more interactive teaching with weConnect, Overture helps us deliver a full, complete solution.”
A graduate of DeVry Institute of Technology, Doug has been in the Technology industry since 1976 and actively oversees Fearing’s daily operations. Along with his wife, Lois, and three others, Doug started Fearing’s in a 600 square-foot facility in Portage, Wisconsin. In the 25 years since, the company has grown to over 30 employees with offices in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Doug likes to say he’s a “TV Technician with a dream� going back to his history with the family’s original business-Fearing’s TV and Appliance.
Doug values time with family, watersports, hiking, snowshoeing and skiing. In addition to being a devoted member of his church, Doug serves as Board President for Kinship Mentoring of Columbia County, Board member of Schools for Haiti and Scripture Chair of the Gideons-Portage camp.
A graduate of MATC, Lois oversees Fearing’s daily book keeping along with various HR responsibilities.
Along with Doug, Lois is deeply connected to community outreach, serving as a Board member and Fundraising Committee Chairperson for Kinship Mentoring of Columbia County. She also serves on the Schools for Haiti Fundraising committee. In addition, Lois’ ongoing passion and commitment to provide care for the elderly comes from her 10-year history of working in a Reedsburg, Wisconsin Nursing home.
Lois enjoys singing, hiking, sunny days on the pontoon, and spending time with her 4 grandchildren.
Ehren drives Fearing’s technology by continually seeking out trends to enhance capabilities while supporting Sales, Engineering and Installation teams. Throughout his years with Fearing’s, Ehren’s talent and vision have joined forces to create a wide variety of projects and strategic solutions that exceed expectation.
Ehren loves music, family time, movies, nature, sustainability efforts and electric vehicles.
With 10 years with Fearing’s and over twice that long in the industry, Ben continues to lead, coordinate, and develop the Commercial AV team.
By consistently delivering an outstanding experience and outcome, Ben contributes to the Fearing’s legacy of long-lasting partnerships that truly make a difference. Whatever the Commercial AV need may be, Ben and team deliver at the highest level.
Ben is an avid fisherman and photographer. He enjoys coaching his sons and other youth.
Chris has been with Fearing’s for 20 years and in the industry for over 2 decades. As a Certified leader in Sales Acceleration and trained in EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating Systems), Chris successfully utilizes his skills to lead the Fearing’s Salesforce. Chris and team are motivated and driven to develop new client partnerships while continuing to reinforce loyal long-term relationships with ongoing Service excellence.
Married for 19 years with 3 children, Chris enjoys skiing, hiking, fishing, boating, hunting, camping and golf. He’s also been actively involved as a Youth Football and Softball coach for his family and others.
