The University of Glasgow is a public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1451, it is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland‘s four ancient universities. The University Library is one of the oldest and largest libraries in Europe, with more than 3 million books and journals. Archives and Special Collections (ASC) is a part of University Services, and it has responsibility to collect and provide access to archival records, manuscripts, rare books and other primary and secondary sources to support teaching and research in the University of Glasgow and the wider community.
In Summer 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the University began to rethink how their teaching should be delivered, in particular how to address the challenges of taking existing face-to-face teaching methods, and moving them out of necessity to an online or hybrid learning environment.
As part of these preparations, and to maintain access to items from ASC, WolfVision partner, Mediascape, has installed a WolfVision EYE-14 camera at the University of Glasgow as part of its ‘virtual classroom’. Connected to a PC running WolfVision software, and using Zoom web conferencing for online teaching, the University enables items such as rare books and other materials to be shown on-screen, and moved around in real time during Zoom classroom sessions.
It completely changes the way we can teach with those items digitally.
Dr Johanna Green Lecturer in Information Studies - University of GlasgowUsing the touchscreen monitor for controlling enables zooming in closely to examine fine details in pictures or portions of text, helping to replicate the in-classroom experience, and improve student engagement. Lecturers can also annotate or highlight parts of the displayed on-screen content as required. Often these sessions are recorded and then made available to students afterwards for on-demand viewing.
The capability to show articles ‘live’ on-screen during online classes, without compromising the quality of the displayed content helps to preserve the interactive and pedagogical approaches that are already in use during in-classroom teaching at the University of Glasgow.
The University of Glasgow has made many preparations in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is important to note that their intention is not solely to address the challenges of the current Covid-19 pandemic, but also to focus on how they can innovate in their teaching methods for the longer term. WolfVision is extremely proud to play such an important supporting role in student education at the University of Glasgow, and looks forward to providing support and advice to this leading educational institution for many years to come.