REACT EU support during the health crisis

European funding to maintain distance learning

The start of the 2020/2021 academic year was marked by the unprecedented Covid-19 health crisis, impacting welcome conditions. As a result, class sizes were reduced in all teaching venues in order to maintain physical distancing and hybrid teaching methods  became widespread at the University of Bordeaux. In total, over 500 facilities based on Zoom solutions were made available for distance learning.

Over 500 videoconferencing facilities with a dedicated support team

577 facilities were deployed throughout the campus based on the Zoom solution with standardised "Zoom Room" or "Zoom Box" systems.

• Zoom Rooms (116), which are stand-alone equipment integrated into a mobile chassis installed in the university's classrooms and amphitheatres. They consist of a 55" high-definition screen, a central processing unit, a microphone, speakers, a high-definition wide-angle camera and a control tablet.
• Zoom Boxes (461), which are made up of lightweight, integrated hardware: sound bar, microphone and high-definition camera 'all in one' with a USB port and positioned on the lecturer's desk.

Getting to grips with these new technologies was a major challenge for their roll-out. From September 2020 onwards, this led to the deployment of 11 dedicated technicians in addition to the university's teams on all campus sites in metropolitan and regional France.

Over 250 IT facilities and enhanced teaching platforms

To support hybrid teaching, 259 items of IT equipment were made available to the teaching communities from September onwards, supplemented by measures directly operated by the university's colleges and institutes.

Similarly, the e-learning platforms based on the Moodle and Pod solutions were reinforced so that these IT applications had the necessary capacity and performance to support the tenfold increase in traffic. A specific platform dedicated to remote exams was built and made available to teaching teams to allow continuous assessment and final exams to take place.

Finally, the programme concluded with the reinforcement of pedagogical data back-ups (recording of online courses) in July 2022.

As a result of all of these developments, over 6.5 million connections were counted in 2020 for both online courses and exams.

These IT and audiovisual equipment deployment operations were carried out by the Audiovisual department, the Information systems department, the Support Mission for Education and Innovation and the Property and environment department on the University of Bordeaux's campus sites.