Montana State University Billings (MSUB) serves over 4,100 students and 200 faculty. Like most universities after the Covid-19 pandemic, Brett Weisz, Chief Information Officer at MSUB who leads an IT team of 10, had to pivot classroom technology strategy to support hybrid learning.
A large student population was already fully-online, but students and faculty wanted the option to continue learning and working remotely some days while coming to campus on others.
“We decided to lean into hy-flex learning to give students and faculty the choice,” Brett explained. “We serve a high number of working students, student athletes, parents, and caregivers, and giving them the ability to join classes in the room or remotely ensures they don’t fall behind.”
The IT department purchased the Meeting Owl to set up MSUB’s first Connected Classroom. Positioning the Meeting Owl at the center of the room, with a monitor at the front of the classroom for displaying remote students, the 360-degree panoramic view of the room, and digital whiteboarding content, instructors could anticipate and answer questions.
In some larger classrooms, they ceiling-mounted the Meeting Owl and used the Meeting Owl App to invert the video feed.
MSUB now has more than 100 Connected Classrooms set up with Meeting Owls and Dell touch monitors, enabling 60% of campus classrooms for hybrid teaching and learning.
“Our faculty appreciate that with the Meeting Owl, they can walk around the classroom and communicate the way they always have while the Owl follows them.” Brett explained.
“Students, faculty, and employees consistently share positive feedback about the immersive experience with Meeting Owls.”
“Onsite and online students can now hear and see everything, which provides for presentation or discussion just as if everyone was in the classroom,” said Marketing Professor A.J. Otjen.
In addition to Connected Classrooms, MSUB has also created over 10 Connected Workspaces in conference rooms across their campuses for departmental and administrative meetings.
From an IT perspective, Brett and his team appreciate the Meeting Owl’s simplicity, flexibility, and fleet management capabilities.
“The Nest helps us push and manage updates for our fleet of 110 Meeting Owls across 18 buildings,” Brett explained. “This way, we can keep all of our rooms online and adjust settings and troubleshoot remotely when needed.”
The Meeting Owl also offers MSUB value for the cost so they’ve been able to continue upgrading buildings on campus with more Connected Classrooms.
The Meeting Owl is MSUB’s standard issue video conferencing equipment for classrooms, workspaces and huddle rooms, and the IT department will continue rolling out more Connected Classrooms and Workspaces as needed.
On the immediate horizon is pairing two Meeting Owls in their largest conference room space to support larger meetings on-campus, and trying out different video modes in the Meeting Owl App to adapt to professors’ unique presentation styles.
“The Meeting Owl was our choice over other options because it’s flexible, easy to use, and reliable,” Brett explained. “Our Meeting Owl experience will only be further advanced with the management capabilities in the Nest to manage our fleet at scale.”
Owl Labs devices are used by more than 6,000 schools and universities globally to support hybrid learning and collaboration. Learn more about our solutions for classrooms here.