In the wake of the world economic crisis, knowing how to get the best results in the financial market is essential. The University of Reading's International Capital Market Association (ICMA) Centre has extended its building to include a new dealing room, corporate training room and a lecture theatre. The new extended facilities was founded by a £5 million donation from the ICMA.
AV specialist Impact, designed a modern environment equipped with the best audiovisual technology for the job. The trading room buzzes as students learn the real deal.
With information provided by real-time stock market information services, the ICMA offers graduate trainees, trainee-traders and any investment banking personnel, a hands-on experience that is both exciting and rewarding.
Impact delivered the advanced learning environment the University wanted, by integrating all AV over Cat5. It also provided an intuitive control system to manage the teaching environments.
The ICMA IT manager King Wong explains: ‘We had an image of what we wanted and our objective was to give our students the best training in a realistic environment.’
The rooms include dual projection in the dealing room and the theatre; PTZ cameras for lecture recording; Wolfvision high resolution visualisers; touch screen PC with white board functionality; customised TeamMate lecterns and Crestron control panels.
The design of the rooms is clean and modern with all connections cleverly hidden away within the lecterns.
Dealing Room
The new 40 station flagship dealing room is not merely a training centre for the traders of the future. It also enables academic staff to combine theory and practice across a whole range of activities. Including derivatives trading, portfolio management, risk management, financial engineering or corporate finance.
The room has a 37-foot eight-colour Daktronics ticker tape displaying market prices and four digital signage plasma screens with the latest news and quotes.
Each of the students’ workstations has a high specification computer (3GHz Core 2 Duo, with 2Gb of RAM) and twin 19" hi-res monitors plus a telephone to allow students to immerse themselves in a trading environment.
To cater for the ICMA’s distant learning and flexible studies, Impact installed two Sony video cameras in each new room. The cameras are fitted at the back and to the side of the room to capture the lesson and the students' interaction.
The two short throw Sanyo projectors at the front of the room, with 6500 ANSI lumens - XGA output on to 150in fixed projection screens allow plenty of room and clear presentation of the studying material.
Executive training room
The executive training room, designed for smaller group sessions, is arranged with a modular table to allow a Harvard style-training room. The room has one projector and screen at the front. A Crestron control panel from where to manage the room, a Wolfvision visualiser and a tablet PC complete the equipment with whiteboard functionality.
The Auditorium
The auditorium theatre at the ICMA, with capacity for 180 people, is a beautiful and modern space, with a raised seating area giving perfect viewing angle all round. The egg-shaped Evid speakers at the front of the room work together with the ceiling speaker to make presentations audible throughout.
The auditorium has dual projection screens and a visualiser. The TeamMate desk has been specially designed to cater for the presenter’s needs, including variable height.