When classroom audiovisual (AV) technology fails, it makes a lasting impression in all the wrong ways.
Tech That “kinda works” is just as bad as tech that doesn’t work at all
Picture this wireless presentation setup:
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Room A needs a special dongle for screen sharing.
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Room B only plays nice with HDMI (or worse, VGA) cables, which won't work for all device types.
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Room C has wireless presentation capabilities, but the connection process varies greatly based on what device type you have.
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The screen in room D hasn’t been able to display presentations since the fall semester, but nobody reported it because no one liked using it in the first place.
This is what AV chaos looks like. It’s the result of systems that technically work but practically don’t. Faculty members stop using them and students stop asking. The gear becomes expensive wall art, and suddenly your school’s investment is quietly wasted.
Here's the kicker: Even when IT teams deploy a standard AV technology that's uniform across the school, some of the same problems arise when people don't like using the technology. Consistency and ease-of-use are equally important.
What AV Chaos Actually Costs
It's hard to put a price on subpar AV tech because it creates issues that show up everywhere. The real damage is operational. Here are some things to remember during budget season:
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Time loss: Constant support requests that disrupt learning time and derail the IT team's day.
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Underused tech: Equipment that gets bypassed because no one trusts it.
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Credibility hits: IT gets blamed for tools people never fully adopted.
The Time Cost
The presenter is ready to go. The audience is waiting. Suddenly, the first ten minutes disappear as the presentation technology fails to do its job. It's a game of trial and error now. The scramble is on. Eventually, an IT tech is pulled away from other work to fix a room that shouldn’t be having these pesky issues in the first place.
It’s not a one-off problem. It’s a loop of unsolved issues. You’re reliving them, and it adds up hour by hour, semester after semester.
The Opportunity Cost
There's nothing worse than standing at the front of the room with all eyes on you as you tinker with uncooperative presentation technology. It's why people don't give AV tech a second chance when it doesn't work the first time. They have to be certain they can rely on it. Classroom tech that is glitchy, inconsistent or hard to use goes from a cool feature to an last resort in an instant.
But it's not just about equipment gathering dust. It’s about missed opportunities to deliver value to faculty, students and the institution.
Every time a display goes unused, that’s a moment lost. Every class that avoids using the room's AV tech is another space you’ve equipped but never properly activated.
The Reputational Cost
People blame tech when it fails. They might also blame the IT team who “bought the wrong thing” or “never supports it well enough.”
That blame isn’t always fair, but it still stings. It shows up in passive comments, complaints, help tickets, workarounds and resistance to new solutions. It makes adoption harder the next time. It turns AV into an uphill battle when it should be a silent partner.
When people lose trust in the classroom experience, they tend to lose trust in the people behind it.
The blowback happens fast
These costs aren’t dramatic. They’re quiet, cumulative and absolutely real.
You don’t see them in a single moment—you feel them over time: in lost hours, in underutilized rooms, in the heavy sighs that happen during another failed screen share.
This is what AV chaos really costs: time your team doesn’t have, value your users never see and credibility that’s hard to earn back. Now the IT team is forced to spend all of its time being reactive instead of proactive. Together, these problems cost your teams, educators and students far more than money.
Stop spending your time on problems that shouldn't exist.
With Ditto, you can give every classroom a screen-sharing experience that just works—no chaos, no caveats.
See how Ditto works and start using it today. →
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