When a tornado struck the Florida campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in late 2006, Brian Wilson and his team began working in earnest to expand their use of AxisTV.

“The tornado took out a couple of buildings on campus, and people had to be relocated,” explained Wilson, Classroom and Lab Support Technician. “Right after students came back from holiday break, we used the AxisTV system, posted signs and set up a computer and monitor in different areas just to get information out.”

Getting updated communications to areas not using AxisTV during this impromptu set up was largely manual and time consuming. Wilson believes AxisTV would have made the difference if the system had been more extensive. “We knew if we had this tool implemented across campus, we could get the information out in about three minutes.”

Wilson and his team are fans of AxisTV since they successfully replaced a bulletin board for printed student advertising with digital signage. They have also tied AxisTV into the school’s cable TV system to broadcast notices for student organizations.

The school’s College of Aviation has expanded their digital signage system with AxisTV’s Professional edition. The college has three plasma displays showing a split screen with half devoted to campus-wide communications and the other half broadcasting messages specific to the College of Aviation. The campus-wide and student organization playlist is run by the school’s Information Center through the Dean of Student Life on Campus, and it presents the same content that runs on its campus cable channel.

Wilson set up the college’s AxisTV access so that they could update content on their own. “They are loving it,” offered Wilson. “They can put up whatever they want. Maybe a notice about a guest speaker, reminding students they need to register, a welcome for visitors. And they can update it right from their offices.”

Wilson elaborated, “Right now the main content creator at the college is the Administrative Assistant to the Dean. It took me about four minutes to train her on how to post. She had a couple of follow up questions but she was up and running quickly. Their favorite feature is AxisTV’s scheduling interface that allows bulletins and postings to come off playlists automatically. The Dean’s Office schedules events anywhere from three months to a year and half out. They create welcome screens for when they’re going to happen in the future, and it’s nice not having to go back and delete them after the fact.”

Connecting campuses, even across country

Embry-Riddle runs three Visix Channel Players - two at its Daytona Beach campus and one at its campus in Prescott, Arizona. “They have their own Channel Player there, connected to our server here, and they update their content remotely,” Wilson comments. AxisTV’s Screen Saver option helps him monitor the communications coming from the Prescott campus. “I run the Screen Saver and pull content from our Channel Player in Arizona,” he explained.

As of September 2007, Embry-Riddle uses one Channel Player in Prescott to feed a 63” plasma in the school’s visitor center. One Channel Player in Daytona is connected to a plasma and LCD in their student union. It’s also feeding the school’s cable channel 18, so that AxisTV messages can be seen everywhere on campus. The third Channel Player is connected to three 42” plasma screens at the College of Aviation.

Wilson would like to see more AxisTV implementation. “We are in the process of putting up a new building for our College of Business. We’re also moving our main computer lab there, and we’re debating one Channel Player for the college’s lobby, or maybe two in order to have one for the college and one for IT to run information for the computer labs. We’re also kicking around some ideas on how to integrate AxisTV into the Web, and possibly the optional feature where you can show Flash® content. That would be attractive for students when they’re at home off campus. For example, if I’m on the crew team and I log into email, I may see a notice on the portal’s main page that the meeting is cancelled. Or if there’s another tornado,” Wilson stresses, “I can see when classes will be rescheduled.”

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