Plug & Play Device for Hybrid Smart Classroom: A Prototype Development

The demand for a smart classroom has been compounded by Covid-19, which allows students to have a meaningful learning experience while staying home. Students who join a classroom in online mode don't have the opportunity to experience a classroom setting because of the hybrid mode of teaching (both online and offline classes). As a result, they have problems such as not being able to see the board clearly, not being able to follow the lecturer because he or she is out of frame, and thus having difficulty learning. Furthermore, this results in lower interaction between the online students and the professor. To teach effectively, the professor is unable to use the entire length of the board as it would not be visible to students joining in online mode. As students and instructors, we identified the issue and developed a plug-and-play device which is portable to address the aforesaid problem during this testing and difficult period of time of the pandemic. The paper outlines the practical implementation of a plug-and-play device that meets the aforementioned requirements. The model also considers power usage, as it can dynamically control energy-consuming resources such as lighting and air conditioning in response to the environment and the presence of students.