As establishments of upper schooling search methods to deal with pupil retention, they’re more and more turning to applied sciences that promise extra of an “at residence” expertise, driving higher 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 typically 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 pals at Cisco. Right now, partly one among our two-part collection on making a safe student-centric expertise, we talk about 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 prospects 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 have to do. And Cisco’s accomplished this for Biola — and it’s accomplished it effectively.
I feel one of many biggest testaments is we’ve a community refresh fund which permits us to proactively cycle out community gear frequently. Nevertheless it doesn’t imply it’s at all times funded completely.
In some instances, we’ve bought these switches which have been on the market operating for eleven, even twelve years . . . they usually’re simply working like champs. They’re doing precisely what they’re imagined to. That’s such a testomony to Cisco’s construct high quality and their {hardware} capabilities. It’s simply doing what it’s imagined to do . . . in a means that you may belief. It’s only a strong product. We’ve been actually profitable with Cisco. It’s been an incredible relationship.
The steadiness that has come from that has been key, it’s been wonderful. We’re capable of do some issues which might be past what we should always have the ability to do with the variety of folks that we’ve. As a result of we’re not having to always firefight, we’re not diverting time to place out the fires. We will deal with innovating issues.
Q: What sort of challenges have 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 making an attempt 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 have 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 imagined to — and it doesn’t actually work that means in a college community. So, we’ve been working to implement Cisco’s answer, consumer outlined networking (UDN), to enhance that situation, enhance the best way that gadgets join and work collectively after they come onto the campus — and the way they work in our enterprise community — making it act extra like a house community situation and answer.
Q: How are you leveraging automation to reinforce your community?
A: We’re primarily utilizing Cisco Catalyst Middle for consumer 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 Middle as effectively, so we will begin automating the method of software program upgrades to assist pace up the method of {hardware} alternative.
So, after we put new switches in place on campus, we will simply deploy the configuration to them. We will replicate what was there on the earlier {hardware}, and get it get it again up and operating as rapidly as doable.
Q: Are you able to inform us a bit about your method 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, pupil community safety has been high of thoughts.
We’ve been making an attempt to place this answer in place, partly as a result of it permits pupil gadgets to work simply collectively, plus it secures them within the course of. It offers a bit containerized community for pupil 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 additionally 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 have 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 book In Search of the Greatest Expertise: Exploring the Roles and Applied sciences of Expertise Pushed Establishments in Increased Schooling. Be part of our Cisco schooling specialists as they go deeper to discover the worth, methods, and applied sciences which might be remodeling student-centric experiences.
Plus, search for half two of our weblog collection titled Creating A Safe Scholar-Centric Expertise: Taking Management, coming quickly.
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