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The Go-To Projector Buying Guide for Universities
- BenQ
- 2018-09-25
India’s higher education sector continues to roll. The number of state-run private universities have almost doubled in the last 5 years. In the same time period, private un-aided colleges have grown 70%. These new institutes including all the existing ones are driving the agenda of quality education. To enable the quality agenda, infrastructure investments, including those into display equipment like projectors, continue to be priority.
To derive maximum value from these projector investments, universities and colleges are advised to look into the following factors.
● Room Requirements
● Projector Features
Room requirements
For an efficient classroom projector purchase process, universities set up two committees. These two committees - technical committee and financial committee - take the ownership of the purchase process. The technical committee does the overall evaluation and appraisal, and is responsible for making recommendations to the financial committee that takes the final decision. Room requirement is one such important criteria for the technical committee to look into
Universities and colleges are large infrastructure assets that span acres, buildings and rooms. College buildings typically have multiple floors, with many rooms, serving different purposes. While each institute might have its own specific custom requirements, the general room requirements when purchasing classroom projectors cover the following scenarios:
Interactive classrooms (DX808ST / LW820ST / LH890UST )
Interactive classrooms are regular classrooms, smaller in size and hold up to 30-40 students. For best impact, projectors need to have the following capabilities.
● Dustproof solutions for optimal performance and reliability
● High brightness for bright lecture rooms
● With zero space constraints, (ultra) short throw projectors eliminate distracting shadows and glare both for students and teachers, enabling them to engage and collaborate
● Wireless solution to strengthen BYOD collaboration
● Smart interactive tools to promote collaborative learning
● Smart management facilitates efficient projector maintenance
Lecture halls (LU950 / LU951ST )
A lecture hall is large, often times in amphitheater style and can hold up to 100 -150 students. For students sitting at the back to be able to see images clearly, high brightness is an essential factor. Besides, the high installation flexibility and centralized management will also make projectors ideal for professional presentation.
Meeting rooms (MX731 / MW732 )
Meeting rooms are not very common in a higher education setup. The corporate resource centre and the Vice Chancellor office would use meeting rooms to welcome dignitaries and companies for campus placements. VC may also use such rooms for important annual and quarterly meetings.
A key to any meeting room is it should have minimum noise interference, from the outside as well as inside, which is why low-noise operation factor is to be kept in mind. Other requirements are similar to a regular classroom such as high brightness, LAN control and a big zoom.
Projector features
Once the room-wise requirement is listed out and an inventory is created, it is time then to map the exact requirement against the features offered by the projector. The following infographic illustrates all the projector features and their corresponding use-case in a vivid easy-to-understand form.
Conclusion
Higher education leadership at India’s universities, by virtue of having an institutionalised projector purchase process, would be considering these factors. Most are still expected to follow the ‘buy low cost projector’ strategy. But discretionary buyers who value education quality and the delivery of intended learning outcomes are expected to value the above factors as they go about making their classroom projector purchase decision.
