Sony helps Tsinghua University deliver immersive remote learning experience for postgrad students
We’ve supported a leading Chinese university combine face-to-face and online learning for students of the acclaimed Schwarzman Scholars postgraduate programme.
- Coronavirus pandemic required university to engage overseas students through innovative remote teaching/learning solution
- Need to reduce personnel present in lecture theatre without compromising video production quality
- Auto-tracking and image cropping of teacher using REA-C1000 Edge Analytics Appliance
- High quality video shooting with 4K Ultra HD compact professional camcorder
- Students learning remotely enjoy richly-detailed 4K video
- Close-up view of teacher assists comprehension and engagement for remote students
- Unattended camera operation reduces health risks in lecture room
Leading international postgraduate programme
Schwarzman Scholars is a prestigious international postgraduate programme hosted at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Founded in 2016, the programme admits up to 200 scholars annually from the United States, China and other countries.
With 80% of scholars enrolled from outside China, the global coronavirus pandemic of 2020 put an effective stop to overseas students travelling to Beijing. As a result, Tsinghua University urgently sought new ways to deliver the curriculum via a remote teaching and learning solution that offered an uncompromised educational experience for students worldwide.
Overcoming the challenges of remote learning
While evaluating various technical options, Tsinghua University realised that conventional video conferencing systems gave unacceptable results when lower-quality camera images were heavily compressed for remote transmission.
As an additional challenge, the university wanted to minimise physical contact – and the attendant risks of infection – by avoiding the need for extra staff in teaching rooms to operate video cameras. The use of static unattended cameras in fixed positions, however, severely limited the ability of lecturers to move freely around the room while communicating with their audience.
Artificial Intelligence automatically tracks teacher’s movements
Sony has provided a solution for Tsinghua University that allows Schwarzman Scholars students to access high-quality teaching resources from anywhere in the world.
The solution is based on Sony’s award-winning REA-C1000 Edge Analytics Appliance that uses Artificial Intelligence to ‘track’ the lecturer’s natural movements as they present to students in the room. Video from an unattended Sony 4K compact camcorder in the lecture theatre is processed by the REA-C1000 to create two separate streams.
One video feed shows a wide-angle view of the whole lecture space in detail-packed 4K resolution. The Edge Analytics Appliance simultaneously crops images from the same camera source, creating an accurately-framed close-up view of the teacher as they move around the room.
Giving remote students a clear view of lectures
Since implementing this innovative solution, Tsinghua University has achieved a hybrid teaching model for its Schwarzman Scholars programme that successfully combines face-to-face and remote teaching.
Students on campus in Beijing can study normally in the classroom. Overseas students attending lectures from home can see clear panoramic images of the classroom and podium area, together with cropped close-ups of the teacher as they present to the class. This combination maximises engagement and immersion for students studying remotely.
With no need for the presence of physical camera operators in the lecture, the university is also able to reduce the number of people in a teaching space, reducing the potential risks of infection for students and staff.
