Driven to innovate by the rise of hybrid/hyflex learning models, higher education institutions are envisioning, upgrading, and building campus spaces in exciting new ways. At the heart of this evolution are AV and IT departments, whose roles have shifted from traditional tech support to strategic architects of inclusive, engaging, and effective learning environments.
In the past, we often thought of AV/IT as support units tasked with resolving technical issues as needed. Although their role was essential, they did not participate in shaping the big picture of learning. But today, they have become indispensable partners to institution leadership, and their expertise shapes the very infrastructure of modern education. This dramatic shift is critical because it allows these experts to help their institutions take full advantage of the benefits of hybrid formats — including greater flexibility, convenience, engagement and enhanced learning — while avoiding mistakes or challenges.
This is how they do it.
Building Learning Spaces
AV and IT departments today help lay out new learning spaces, retrofit existing ones, and design and install tech setups in each to ensure a high-quality hybrid teaching and learning experience. With nearly a quarter of college students experiencing videoconferencing fatigue, often caused by static content delivery or disjointed interactions, higher education institutions are now relying on AV/IT to enable seamless, dynamic formats that give learners the highest-quality education possible. To do that, they must address nuanced challenges that directly affect student engagement and outcomes in hybrid learning environments.
Many institutions have varied campus infrastructure — some buildings may be new, while others are hundreds of years old. This means they have different power supply systems and wiring, different room layouts, and different tech installation profiles, all of which makes standardizing AV technology across learning spaces difficult. But without that standardization, faculty tend to encounter frustrations when switching between spaces on campus.
As institutions work to establish standard tech setups, AV leaders now increasingly act as guides. Their ability to foresee problems in old buildings is valuable, since even minor infrastructure upgrades can turn any project into a challenge. Matthieu Kaminski, the audiovisual & digital services program director at UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science and Society, is all too familiar with retrofitting buildings. In a conversation about upgrading his campus, he said, “With so many competing priorities, small projects like adding power outlets in old buildings may see significant delays.” Sometimes these pain points are unavoidable, but Kaminski and other AV experts are now often consulted in advance to find ways around them.
Other common AV challenges include accessibility. In large lecture halls or classrooms with blind spots or bad acoustics, remote learners may struggle to see presenters clearly or hear classroom discussions. This is especially important to consider if students have hearing or visual impairments. For example, background noise and poor audio quality have been shown to impede comprehension for hearing-impaired students.
In modern learning spaces, AV and IT teams address these factors by prioritizing solutions that feature user-centered design, and by seeking feedback from faculty and students to identify and remove barriers. To ensure visual accessibility, experts implement high-resolution camera systems, which can track presenters and students in real time or show the room from preselected perspectives. The choice of technology changes based on the space and the objectives, but in either case the point is to give remote participants a clearer sense of presence and context.
AV/IT are responsible for optimizing audio as well, with a variety of microphone technologies as well as real-time captioning to ensure sound is captured accurately and distributed evenly throughout the learning space. As with video, audio does not have a one-size-fits-all solution, so the expertise AV and IT leaders can bring to bear in each space is critical to help students hear every word, whether they’re sitting in the back row or joining remotely. Combined with adaptive noise suppression, good microphone systems allow remote learners to follow natural, real-time conversations including peer discussions.
Download: 2025 Unified Communications and Collaboration Report
Knowing the Landscape and Choosing the Right Solutions
Institutional administrators rely on AV and IT experts for their insights about the latest tools and technologies available, how they boost student engagement and teaching effectiveness, and how to integrate them smoothly in tech ecosystems.
AV/IT must know the specs and features of technologies such as videoconferencing systems and translate them into real-world impacts, like bridging the gap between in-person and remote learners, improving comprehension, and ensuring all students feel present and heard. They must know how to balance intelligent automation with intuitive manual controls, since inclusive design also requires tactile options. (For example, many VC systems are built for speakers, but for students with speech or hearing impairments, manual, button-based controls can offer a more effective way to engage with classroom technology.) They must know which audio capture options — including beamforming arrays, lapel mics and ceiling-mounted solutions — can represent every voice in a given room with precision. And what’s more, they have to stay informed about advances in all the above technologies to ensure their institutions remain on the leading edge.
UC Berkeley’s Kaminski summarizes his job as a marriage of technical expertise with advocacy for students and instructors. He says, “By combining technology with a learner-centric approach, we can strengthen education and reinforce our institutional mission to innovate and inspire locally and globally.”
Testing and Training
The success of any AV implementation hinges on rigorous testing and hands-on training driven by AV/IT. Before solutions are scaled, these teams have to assess their performance in real-world classroom conditions, ensuring the solutions align with what their institution is trying to achieve. Training is just as crucial: AV and IT specialists work directly with faculty to explain the capabilities of new technologies, tailoring guidance to their teaching styles. Providing this personalized support boosts adoption and ensures tools are used effectively. Meanwhile, the feedback channels they open with instructors and students help refine systems over time. In this way, AV/IT enables continuous improvement and ensures long-term ROI.
The Next Generation of Higher Ed
As hybrid learning models have become more prevalent, AV and IT departments have firmly established themselves as crucial partners for college and university leadership teams. By making the jump from tech support to operational strategy, they have created a central place for themselves in the next generation of higher ed, and their contributions will shape the fundamental character of learning and teaching for years to come.
Gaurav Bradoo is director and head of product at Logitech for Education.
