Student-Centric Experience? What’s That All About?

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 dwelling” expertise, driving better engagement and safety for his or her customers, whereas being easy and dependable to make use of. However usually 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 pals at Cisco. As we speak, partially one in all our two-part sequence on making a safe student-centric expertise, we focus on their expertise journey with Scott Himes, Biola’s director of community operations.

Q: Previous to Cisco, what was your expertise 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 right down to it, the instruments should do what the instruments have to do. And Cisco’s carried out this for Biola — and it’s carried out 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 tools frequently. However it doesn’t imply it’s all the time funded completely.

In some circumstances, we’ve acquired these switches which have been on the market operating for eleven, even twelve years . . . and so they’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 approach that you would be able to belief. It’s only a stable product. We’ve been actually profitable with Cisco. It’s been an awesome relationship.

The steadiness that has come from that has been key, it’s been wonderful. We’re in a position to do some issues which might be 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 continuously firefight, we’re not diverting time to place out the fires. We will 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 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 dwelling simply works. They have a look at connecting all their gadgets, their Apple TV’s, gaming methods, all that stuff like that and all the things works the way in which it’s imagined 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 state of affairs, enhance the way in which 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 boost 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 properly, so we are able to begin automating the method of software program upgrades to assist velocity up the method of {hardware} alternative.

So, once we put new switches in place on campus, we are able to 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 shortly as potential.

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

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 making an attempt 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 offers slightly 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 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 gadgets they need to share.

Subsequent up

Now that we’ve taken a short 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 e book In Search of the Greatest Expertise: Exploring the Roles and Applied sciences of Expertise Pushed Establishments in Greater Schooling. Be a part of our Cisco schooling consultants 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 sequence titled Creating A Safe Pupil-Centric Expertise: Taking Management, coming quickly.

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