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When designing the project, the university started with how lecturers and students actually use its spaces, rather than with a list of equipment.
“The idea was to design and improve our spaces from the user's perspective, rather than the technology's. How does someone interact with the room? What does their workflow look like? We integrated the microphones into the building infrastructure so that lecturers would not have to think about setup or how to use them,” explains Jason Ramsden, Head of Audiovisual Systems Design and Deputy Audiovisual Manager at the University of Lincoln.
The need for a different approach became particularly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, when hybrid learning became an essential part of education.
Handheld and lapel microphones captured lecturers' voices well, but students' questions and classroom discussions were often difficult for remote participants to hear. Portable microphones could also run out of battery, go missing or be used incorrectly.
The university's aim was to keep lecturers' interaction with the equipment to a minimum.
“Lecturers are experts in their subjects, not in audiovisual systems. All we want them to do is turn the system on and log in. Everything else should simply work,” says Ramsden.
After testing several ceiling microphone solutions, the University of Lincoln team chose Sennheiser TeamConnect Ceiling Solutions. The university's specialists found that Sennheiser's adaptive beamforming technology delivered the most consistent results. Their previous experience with SpeechLine Digital Wireless systems also influenced the choice.
In seminar rooms and other teaching spaces, TeamConnect Ceiling 2 and TeamConnect Ceiling Medium have changed the approach to speech capture.
Lecturers no longer need to set up or use a separate microphone. They can enter a room and teach as usual. Microphone coverage supports a variety of hybrid learning scenarios, and pickup zones can be adapted for both traditional lectures and collaborative discussions.
TruVoicelift and Advanced Exclusion Zones, available for both TCC 2 and TCC M, have proved particularly useful.
TruVoicelift is used in larger lecture spaces, allowing lecturers to move freely around the room and speak without a handheld or wearable microphone. Exclusion zones allow the system to disregard specific areas with unwanted sound sources and accommodate the acoustics of each room.
According to Ramsden, this is particularly important because teaching spaces rarely have ideal acoustics, and each has its own acoustic characteristics.
Another requirement was the ability to change how rooms are used.
If a room's layout changes, the team can adjust its pickup and exclusion zones without making major changes to the infrastructure itself.
“There is flexibility in the technology. If we need to change a room's configuration, beamforming makes that easier. TCC 2 is well suited to the dynamic changes taking place in higher education today and allows spaces to adapt to how they will be used in the future,” Ramsden notes.
With so much equipment installed, centralised management was an important requirement.
Sennheiser Control Cockpit allows the technical team to monitor installed devices and track system status across the campus from a single software interface.
The University of Lincoln team says that being able to quickly see what is happening with the equipment and respond to issues has made managing an audiovisual system of this scale significantly easier.
Moving to ceiling arrays did not mean abandoning traditional microphones entirely.
The University of Lincoln continues to use Sennheiser SpeechLine Digital Wireless in 12 lecture theatres. These spaces host events and presentations as well as classes.
Handheld and bodypack transmitters remain useful in certain situations. For example, a lecturer may use a handheld microphone when they need to focus the audience's attention more strongly on their speech.
The university therefore used different solutions according to each scenario, rather than replacing one type of microphone with another throughout every room.
The project also includes automatic camera control.
In smaller seminar rooms, TCC 2 works alongside Huddly cameras with built-in automatic framing algorithms.
In larger lecture theatres, EVA camera systems receive data from the microphones and use it to track lecturers and participants asking questions. Room control is implemented using Extron solutions.
The aim is to reduce the number of actions a lecturer needs to perform during a class.
Sennheiser MobileConnect, installed in four spaces, is another part of the project.
It allows students to connect to the audio system using their own devices and headphones. The University of Lincoln sees it as both an assistive listening system and a tool for making learning more accessible to students with different needs.
One example highlighted by the university is a student who finds it difficult to remain in a noisy or crowded classroom for a long period. MobileConnect allows them to leave the room while continuing to hear the class.
Following the deployment, the university reported more consistent microphone system performance across its campus spaces.
The number of microphone-related support requests also fell: the equipment has become part of the rooms' permanent infrastructure and requires fewer actions from users.
Caleb Connors, Digital Audiovisual Technology Manager at the University of Lincoln, says this has reduced the workload for the technical team. Instead of constantly resolving problems, specialists can spend more time developing teaching spaces.
The University of Lincoln project shows how different Sennheiser solutions can be used within a single audiovisual infrastructure.
TeamConnect Ceiling 2 and TeamConnect Ceiling Medium provide ceiling-based speech capture in teaching spaces; SpeechLine Digital Wireless remains available where handheld and wearable microphones are needed; MobileConnect expands individual listening options; and Sennheiser Control Cockpit brings device management together.
The project was built around the user's workflow rather than a specific product: lecturers should be able to enter a room and start teaching without spending time setting up microphones or other system components.
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