As establishments of upper schooling search methods to handle scholar retention, they’re more and more turning to applied sciences that promise extra of an “at house” expertise, driving better 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 neglected 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. In the present day, partially one among our two-part sequence 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 executed this for Biola — and it’s executed it properly.
I feel one of many biggest testaments is now we have a community refresh fund which permits us to proactively cycle out community gear regularly. However it doesn’t imply it’s at all times funded completely.
In some circumstances, we’ve obtained these switches which have been on the market working for eleven, even twelve years . . . and so they’re simply working like champs. They’re doing precisely what they’re purported to. That’s such a testomony to Cisco’s construct high quality and their {hardware} capabilities. It’s simply doing what it’s purported to do . . . in a approach that you could belief. It’s only a strong product. We’ve been actually profitable with Cisco. It’s been an important relationship.
The steadiness that has come from that has been key, it’s been wonderful. We’re capable of do some issues which are past what we should always be capable to do with the variety of people who now we have. As a result of we’re not having to always firefight, we’re not diverting time to place out the fires. We are able to concentrate on 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 attempting to make the dorm expertise, from a wi-fi standpoint, extra like the house community expertise that they arrive from.
Their community at house simply works. They take a look at connecting all their units, their Apple TV’s, gaming techniques, all that stuff like that and all the pieces works the way in which it’s purported to — and it doesn’t actually work that approach in a college community. So, we’ve been working to implement Cisco’s answer, consumer outlined networking (UDN), to enhance that situation, enhance the way in which that units 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 situation and answer.
Q: How are you leveraging automation to boost your community?
A: We’re primarily utilizing Cisco Catalyst Heart 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 Heart as properly, so we are able to begin automating the method of software program upgrades to assist pace up the method of {hardware} substitute.
So, after we put new switches in place on campus, we are able to 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 potential.
Q: Are you able to inform us a bit about your strategy to community safety at Biola, and why it can be crucial?
A: I feel community safety is inherent, it’s one thing that’s crucial. 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 units to work simply collectively, plus it secures them within the course of. It offers slightly containerized community for scholar units that isolates their units from their roommate’s or neighbors’ units. It permits them to make use of precisely what they need to use on the campus community and restricts different individuals from them, but additionally permits them to ask different college students into their UDN, too, to allow them to share the units they need to share.
Subsequent steps for a student-centric expertise
Now that we’ve taken a short 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 book In Search of the Finest Expertise: Exploring the Roles and Applied sciences of Expertise Pushed Establishments in Larger Training. Be part of our Cisco schooling specialists as they go deeper to discover the worth, methods, and applied sciences which are reworking student-centric experiences.
Plus, search for half two of our weblog sequence titled Creating A Safe Pupil-Centric Expertise: Taking Management, coming quickly.
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