The Pupil-Centric Expertise: Applied sciences – Cisco Blogs


As establishments of upper training search methods to handle scholar retention, they’re more and more turning to applied sciences that promise extra of an “at residence” expertise, driving larger engagement and safety for his or her customers, whereas being easy and dependable to make use of. It is called a student-centric expertise. However usually ignored is the community behind all of it.

When Biola College, a personal Christian college in Southern California, sought options, they reached out to their buddies at Cisco. Right now, partially certainly one of our two-part collection on making a safe student-centric expertise, we focus on their know-how journey with Scott Himes, Biola’s director of community operations.


Q: Previous to Cisco, what was your know-how like and why did you select to stick with Cisco?

A: We’ve been Cisco clients for fairly a while, 20 plus years, since earlier than I began on the college. When it comes all the way down to it, the instruments should do what the instruments must do. And Cisco’s performed this for Biola — and it’s performed it properly.

I feel one of many best testaments is we have now a community refresh fund which permits us to proactively cycle out community tools frequently. Nevertheless it doesn’t imply it’s at all times funded completely.

In some circumstances, we’ve bought these switches which were on the market working for eleven, even twelve years . . . and so they’re simply working like champs. They’re doing precisely what they’re presupposed to. That’s such a testomony to Cisco’s construct high quality and their {hardware} capabilities. It’s simply doing what it’s presupposed to do . . . in a method that you could belief. It’s only a strong product. We’ve been actually profitable with Cisco. It’s been an ideal relationship.

Biola University student-centric experience

The steadiness that has come from that has been key, it’s been superb. We’re capable of do some issues which might be past what we should always be capable to do with the variety of those who we have now. As a result of we’re not having to consistently firefight, we’re not diverting time to place out the fires. We are able to concentrate on innovating issues.

Q: What sort of challenges had been you dealing with?

A: One problem we’ve been working to resolve on our campus has been the issue of scholars wanting to enhance the community connectivity within the dorms, actually attempting to make the dorm expertise, from a wi-fi standpoint, extra like the house community expertise that they arrive from.

Their community at residence simply works. They take a look at connecting all their gadgets, their Apple TV’s, gaming methods, all that stuff like that and every thing works the best way it’s presupposed to — and it doesn’t actually work that method in a college community. So, we’ve been working to implement Cisco’s answer, person outlined networking (UDN), to enhance that state of affairs, enhance the best way that gadgets join and work collectively once they come onto the campus — and the way they work in our enterprise community — making it act extra like a house community state of affairs and answer.

Q: How are you leveraging automation to reinforce your community?

A: We’re primarily utilizing Cisco Catalyst Heart for person outlined networking. We’re utilizing it to deploy our wi-fi controllers and our wi-fi entry factors, and to configure the wi-fi community as an entire.

And we’re simply beginning to add our wired community infrastructure into Cisco Catalyst Heart as properly, so we will begin automating the method of software program upgrades to assist velocity up the method of {hardware} substitute.

So, after we put new switches in place on campus, we will simply deploy the configuration to them. We are able to replicate what was there on the earlier {hardware}, and get it get it again up and working as shortly as attainable.

Q: Are you able to inform us a bit about your strategy to community safety at Biola, and why it’s important? 

A: I feel community safety is inherent, it’s one thing that’s important. We see it at each degree of the campus community. As a result of we’ve been engaged on this UDN answer, scholar community safety has been prime of thoughts.

We’ve been attempting to place this answer in place, partly as a result of it permits scholar gadgets to work simply collectively, plus it secures them within the course of. It supplies just a little containerized community for scholar gadgets that isolates their gadgets from their roommate’s or neighbors’ gadgets. It permits them to make use of precisely what they wish to use on the campus community and restricts different folks from them, but in addition permits them to ask different college students into their UDN, too, to allow them to share the gadgets they wish to share.

Subsequent steps for a student-centric expertise

Now that we’ve taken a quick take a look at the applied sciences concerned in making a student-centric expertise, I invite you to take a deeper dive by exploring our newest interactive e-book In Search of the Greatest Expertise: Exploring the Roles and Applied sciences of Expertise Pushed Establishments in Increased Schooling. Be a part of our Cisco training specialists as they go deeper to discover the worth, methods, and applied sciences which might be reworking student-centric experiences.

Plus, search for half two of our weblog collection titled Creating A Safe Pupil-Centric Expertise: Taking Management, coming quickly.

 

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