Psychology labs and technology: Insights from ATSiP 2018

Psychology technicians from universities across the UK and Ireland made the trip to the University of Bath last week for the 2018 ATSiP conference. It was an impressive setting for this year’s event, which took place in the University’s new 10 West building (see its opening day video here). This blog post summarises some of Lorensbergs’ insights and findings from ATSiP 2018.

The 10 West building has been designed to support a wide range of research environments, with facilities that were described upon its opening as being unparalleled in the UK. For psychology departments, providing access to well-equipped and organised labs is fundamental to advancing their institutions’ research agendas and teaching standards. It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to present on how our connect2 lab and equipment management solution has supported staff in achieving these ambitions at Bath.

Early on Day Two of the conference, Susie Martin, Experimental Officer at Bath, gave a very insightful talk entitled ‘Finding my Feet: New building, new job’. It charted Susie’s time at the University, with her arrival coinciding with the new building project. Susie has dealt with everything from speccing new labs to dealing with building contractors and discussing cabling requirements. As part of the presentation, Susie introduced connect2 as ‘one of the first new systems we implemented in the new building’. This emphasises the importance of their front-facing services, providing efficient lab and equipment access, and supporting the professional image of the department in its new building. 

We went on to demonstrate how the new building’s 31 labs, 14 rooms and range of equipment are organised and displayed in the online connect2 system (our presentation slides are available here). Connect2 showcases the range of facilities available to students. It also gets a great reception when shown to those visiting the department. Most importantly, it allows users to view and book what they need online, making it much easier to organise lab access for both staff and students, not least because users get instant confirmation of bookings in the automated connect2 system...

Latest kit: where the value lies for universities

At the BVE 2018 media and entertainment technology tradeshow, staff and students in higher education were sharing their opinion on what media equipment provided by their institutions was most highly valued and important. They also disclosed what they hoped would be invested in next. Here’s an overview of our findings from the show.

Most valued equipment already provided

As you would expect, high quality, industry standard equipment is highly valued, and many are proud of providing or benefiting from access to such high-end kit as: Arri Alexa cameras, Blackmagic cameras and ATEM mixing systems, Avid post-production, Red Dragon 6K cameras, and Sound Devices mixers. Several students from one institution were also very enthusiastic about their impressive TV studio for which they enjoyed trying out multi-camera work and gaining experience with vision mixers.

What's needed next

Ideas on where institutions’ money should be spent next resulted in a very long wish list indeed. But here are the main insights into what both students and staff want next...