School Background: Trinity Hall is an independent, all-girls school that educates and empowers young women in the Catholic tradition through an innovative college preparatory program grounded in their four core values of leadership, respect, perseverance, and faith. Trinity Hall prepares each student to achieve her full potential as she embraces her place in the world.

Challenge: Trinity Hall has students who are sometimes unable to be in the classroom for longer periods due to illness, injury, or disability. They needed a solution that would allow students unable to come to campus to keep up with Trinity Hall’s rigorous curriculum in a way that would let them engage and participate in classroom discussions and assignments alongside their classmates. 

As Melissa Whelan, Trinity Hall's Dean of Student Life, describes it:

“We’ve had students who needed to be out of the classroom for prolonged periods due to medical reasons, and in those cases, it isn’t enough for them to get notes from a classmate and keep up with their schoolwork from home. We needed a solution so they could join classes from home so their learning didn’t suffer.”

Use Case: Trinity Hall uses the Meeting Owl Pro to connect students at home with their classes on campus. The Meeting Owl Pro is used in each remote student’s classes and is set up on one of the desks at the front of the room, along with a laptop. The 360° panoramic lens paired with the Owl Intelligence System (OIS)™ that autofocuses on whoever is speaking in the classroom creates an immersive learning experience for students at home. 

With desks set up in a U-shaped formation, students at home can raise their hands and be called on in class while being able to hear what teachers and students are presenting in the classroom with the help of Smart Mics with an 18-foot audio pickup radius. In the classroom, students and teachers can clearly hear and see remote students so they’re part of the discussion instead of a fly on the wall. 

Melissa explains:

“With the Meeting Owl Pro, students can join and participate in their classes from home instead of just watching them. We can move the Meeting Owl Pro closer to the whiteboard for math classes or into the center of the classroom for small group discussion in world language classes so remote students can truly participate. The Camera Lock feature helps remote students focus on the whiteboard or an in-class presentation as well.”

Solution: With the help of the Meeting Owl Pro, if a Trinity Hall student needs to be away from school and out of the classroom, she doesn’t fall behind on her learning or miss out on the classroom experience. Instead, students can learn from home while staying engaged with what’s going on in their classes with a solution that’s easy for teachers to manage without having to change the way they instruct. The Meeting Owl Pro’s Plug and Play setup is easy for in-classroom students and teachers to deploy, and the face-to-face experience it creates mirrors the classroom setting for optimal collaboration and learning from anywhere. 

As Melissa puts it:

“Before using the Meeting Owl Pro, other video conferencing solutions made it impossible for students joining class from home to see and hear the other students in the classroom. Now, our students’ learning isn’t interrupted if they can’t come to school, and we can keep them engaged and a part of what’s going on in the classroom, no matter where their learning takes place.”

As Trinity Hall prepares for the 2020-2021 school year, they plan to use the Meeting Owl Pro across their campus to support remote learning for students, teachers, and administrators. We're honored to support Trinity Hall as they continue to deliver a rigorous academic learning environment, both virtually and in person.

To learn more about how K-12 schools and universities are using the Meeting Owl, visit our hybrid learning resources page to read more.