Today’s incoming students grew up on one-to-one tablets, cloud collaboration, and teachers who could pivot smoothly between in-person and online instruction. When they step into a lecture hall, they don’t just hope the technology will keep up—they assume it will. Unfortunately, many colleges still rely on a patchwork of legacy projectors, cables that never seem to reach the right port, and one-off “fixes” that solve yesterday’s problem while creating tomorrow’s headache. Faculty feel the strain first, wrestling with inconsistent interfaces and wasting valuable class time troubleshooting. IT and facilities teams feel it next, fielding a barrage of support calls for rooms that all behave differently. The result is a learning environment that signals disorganization and steals focus from teaching and discovery.

A Strategic A/V Refresh changes that narrative by putting pedagogy—not product—at the center of every decision. Rather than rushing to replace a flickering projector or adding yet another adapter, the refresh begins with an honest assessment of how people teach and learn across campus. From there, it creates a roadmap that ties classroom technology directly to instructional goals, choosing core components that repeat from room to room so any faculty member can walk in and feel immediately at home. Standardization slashes support tickets and training time, while an agile, networked backbone supports HyFlex and hybrid learning models at scale. Most importantly, the plan anticipates change, selecting modular, AV-over-IP solutions that can evolve as pedagogy and technology continue to shift. The goal is simple: craft learning spaces that come to life the moment a professor presses “Start,” letting the technology fade into the background while ideas take center stage.