Case studyAudio-visualLecture capture

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Pace Systems built the lecture capture at Chicago Booth that records more than 35 classrooms at once.

35+classrooms recorded at once, through one control room

Chicago
London
Hong Kong

The Challenge

The school was running on a standard-definition analog backbone, and it needed its classrooms at the Harper Center in Hyde Park and the Gleacher Center downtown recorded and sent to campuses as far as London and Hong Kong.

The Solution

We replaced that backbone with high-definition video over fiber, and we built the head end, the control system and the control room that serves both of Booth’s Chicago buildings, so both buildings’ classrooms are recorded and sent out from one place.

Booth has since brought us back for five more jobs. We did complete digital overhauls of the auditoriums at both the Harper Center and the Gleacher Center, added tracking cameras to 38 classrooms, fitted out 11 classrooms at the Gleacher Center, built distance-learning rooms for the London campus and did the first refresh of the Harper Center’s tiered classrooms.

We don’t call a room finished until it passes our written acceptance checklist, because the first time a room is used for a real class, it has to work. Once the job is done, we hand over a closeout package of drawings, serial numbers and programming files, and we train the people who will run the rooms.