MAXIMISING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Transcription

1 MAXIMISING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION UNIFYING CAMPUS COMMUNICATIONS WITH CLOUD-BASED APPS

2 Indeed, according to the same survey, adoption of cloud services falls into three distinct segments. Many colleges and universities are leading the way in adopting cloud-computing based services as a cost-savings measure and a way to quickly provide access to advanced technology capabilities. Cloud-based and collaborative suites are one such example of cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS). However, in doing so, institutions have inadvertently missed the opportunity to maximize collaborative learning capabilities through the synergies between SaaS and their unified communications (UC) infrastructure and applications investments. What s needed is an approach that seamlessly integrates UC and cloud environments. HIGHER EDUCATION IS MIGRATION TO THE CLOUD Colleges and universities face significant challenges today. In addition to continuing budget pressures due to revenue shortfalls, they must compete aggressively to attract and retain the top students and faculty. Therefore there is a sharp focus on adopting strategies to address student retention and educational outcomes, streamlining administrative processes and improving student support services. Such activities have led many institutions to consider cloud-based services. According to a Gartner survey of higher education institution CIOs, 49 percent of institutions are already involved in some type of cloud sourcing, with this increasing to 67 percent by year-end Two-thirds of these CIOs expect to move more than half of their services into cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) before year-end A class of SaaS that has experienced strong adoption has been cloud-based , calendaring, and personal productivity and collaboration suites, which have enabled institutions to cut costs, enhance collaboration and learning, and improve user efficiency and productivity. In a fall 2011 survey of U.S. higher education institutions by The Campus Computing Project 2, two-thirds of survey participants reported that they had already deployed cloud-based student , with one-fifth doing the same for faculty . Google was the top overall cloud-based campus provider accounting for 56 percent of campuses, followed by Microsoft at 41 percent and Zimbra with 2 percent. Services like , calendaring and collaborative suites show the highest adoption rates. Customer relationship management (CRM) and learning management systems (LMS) show slightly lower adoption rates. Finally, mission-critical enterprise applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications for research, have yet to see a great deal of traction in the cloud something that is expected to change in the coming 24 months. WHY THE CLOUD? Cloud is attractive to colleges and universities for a number of reasons. Across the board, universities are under pressure to target specific areas for reducing costs and generating user productivity gains. The cloud offers opportunities for both. With the help of firms like Google and Microsoft, institutions are now reaping substantial benefits by moving to the cloud. FIRST, COST: Delivering , calendaring and productivity suites via the cloud is significantly lower cost than providing on-premise versions of these important applications and services. This makes cloud an especially compelling proposition for universities that have fallen behind in upgrading and replacing aging legacy applications. They re finding it easier to leapfrog to cloud-based applications that offer advanced functionality than to go through the hassle and expense of upgrading onpremise applications For example, according to Google, Vanderbilt University s move to the cloud for and collaboration applications helped avoid more than $750,000 in storage costs alone 3. Similarly, Utah State University officials estimate it would have cost approximately $800,000 annually to build and maintain an on-premise system due to the cost of purchasing and supporting the necessary servers, licenses, and storage infrastructure 4. By moving to the cloud, Utah State pays just a fraction of that. In addition to , the university also gets the benefit of a collaboration suite of applications. Because the school doesn t have to maintain physical servers or storage, IT support overhead has been virtually eliminated. By deploying cloud, the school managed to avoid a significant increase in student fees something it had dreaded being forced to do by the high cost of its previously onpremise and collaborative applications. 1 A quick look at cloud computing in higher education, 2012, Gartner, March 6, 2012, G

3 Research by the Aberdeen Group in 2007 illustrated the significant impact that UC solutions can have on an organisation s workforce. The results showed that best-in-class organisations experienced a SECOND, SERVICES: institutions of higher education are being enticed to the cloud by the promise of delivering new and more sophisticated services to their constituent populations students, faculty and employees. They have a continuing need to attract top-tier talent in all three categories, and the ease, flexibility and enhanced functionality that cloud-based applications offer to users makes them extremely attractive in a campus environment. UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS ADOPTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION To enhance productivity and service levels, higher education institutions are modernising campus communications with sophisticated unified communications (UC) capabilities. UC is defined as the integration of real-time communications services (e.g., telephony, instant messaging, chat, presence, video calling and conferencing, data sharing, call control, and speech recognition) with non-real-time services such as voic , and fax. UC offers users a consistent interface and experience across multiple devices and media types, allowing users to send a message on one medium and receive the same communication on another medium. For example, they are able to access voic messages via over mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. Institutions deploying UC do so to address critical business needs, such as improving student retention and improving business operations. TOP NEEDS INCLUDE ENHANCING: 55 percent increase in employee responsiveness to others. The research also indicated a 52 percent increase in employee ability to gain knowledge or data from others. Furthermore, best-in-class organisation s experienced a 60 percent increase in the flexibility of their workforce 5. In higher education, some of the most productive features of UC frequently cited include instant messaging, mobility, presence, one touch dialing (click-to-call) and remote desktop. UC enhances collaborations between faculty and students. Students can determine the availability of their professors or guidance counselors and connect to them using the communications media of their choice. This seamless integration of communications speeds connections between individuals and accelerates decision-making and problem-solving among members of an institution s extended community. HOWEVER, A LESS-THAN-SILVER LINING IN THE CLOUD There is no doubt that both UC and cloud-based application adoption is making a positive impact in higher education. However, in their haste to adopt and realize their cloud strategies, campus leaders may miss an opportunity to leverage their investment in campus-based UC. When institutions move their or productivity suites to the cloud while maintaining premise-based campus communications services like telephony, voic and audio conferencing, they effectively create a wedge that breaks the seamless nature of UC. Esna has discovered that college campuses which deploy UC in isolation from cloud-based collaborative applications may take a step forward in cost management, but they then take a step backward by no longer maximizing end-user productivity. Collaborative learning for students Faculty research opportunities Distance learning Administrative efficiency Student achievement and outcomes For example, a student looking for help would be unable to use Google Apps to check the availability of her professor, who at the moment is talking on her campus office phone. Faculty would not have access to a unified desktop or unified mobile device interface to seamlessly access voice mail, and fax mail. An adjunct professor needing to collaborate with another professor who is currently on the office phone would have trouble identifying her colleague s availability because presence information and click-to-call capabilities are not federated between the cloud-based collaborative suite and the campus-base UC system. Fragmented communications produce inefficiencies, and productivity decreases as a consequence. 5 The Aberdeen Group, Driving Workforce Productivity with Unified Communications,

4 Park University decided to deploy a multisite, single Avaya UC environment that supported both TAKING THE NEXT STEP FOR GREATER IMPACT: TOWARD SEAMLESS UC AND CLOUD INTEGRATION For the reasons cited above, early adopter institutions are beginning to integrate their campusbased UC environment with the cloud, a next logical step after moving to the cloud. For cost and simplicity purposes, institutions contemplating this next step should seek a solution that offers a software framework that can seamlessly integrate their campus-based UC implementations with cloud-based , calendaring or collaborative suites like Google Apps, Microsoft 365 or Zimbra. Successfully achieving seamless integration requires institutions to have certain capabilities that span the campus UC and cloud domains [see The Essentials ]. SUCH CAPABILITIES INCLUDE: cloud-base Google Apps and campus-based Microsoft Exchange with Officelinx in the middle providing interoperability between both the Google Apps, Exchange and Avaya UC environments. The initiative also included providing user presence, on-hook/off-hook status notification both in Microsoft Outlook and in Google Apps, and the ability to support both Google Android and Apple ios mobile devices. BENEFITS OF UC-CLOUD INTEGRATION Colleges and universities derive enormous benefits from integrating UC with cloud-based applications and services. Among them: Enabling cost savings needed to offset budget shortfalls. Because cloud applications don t require on-premise servers or storage, or the IT staff to maintain them, substantial savings can be Unifying messaging (voice mail, and fax mail) Federating rich on-hook/off-hook presence and click-to-call functionality across domains Allowing users to be reached and answer calls live from their office desktop, mobile device or remote location with location-based routing and find-me/follow-me automation Supporting instant messaging capabilities to provide real-time communication between users logged into the network via the Internet, Intranet or wireless network. Leveraging an institution s virtualization infrastructure to implement a cost effective, secure, authenticated link between on-campus UC and cloud-based applications achieved. Also, the cost of cloud-based services is generally less than the licensing fees charged by on-premise application vendors. Institutions can leverage their investment in UC solutions, like those from Avaya, to be easily integrated with cloud-based apps from providers like Google and Microsoft to enable significant cost savings. Enabling a more responsive and productive environment. Student, faculty and staff interactions are enhanced because end-users are more available. This can lead to speedier responses, quicker decision making and faster problem resolution. Individuals can be more mobile because they have access to their communications virtually any way, anywhere and anytime they want. Park University has implemented such a solution utilizing Esna Officelinx to integrate its Avaya phone system with cloud-based Google Gmail 6. Based in Parkville, Missouri, Park University has a student population of 22,678 served by an on-premise Microsoft Exchange system. Exchange was already integrated with the university s UC implementation, but the university wanted to move 1,800 of its users to Gmail. Its plans to move partially to the cloud were complicated by the fact that it has multiple campuses in different locations across the U.S., and it needed to support all of the remote campuses and remote faculty and students with consistent UC services, no matter which service they were using. Additionally, approximately 400 users were using mobile devices. Helping the institution to compete, attract, and retain students and faculty members. The highest-quality students and professors are courted by multiple academic institutions. To attract them, colleges and universities need to offer innovative services that allow them to work, teach, and learn efficiently and productively. The enhanced functionality of cloud applications that are familiar and used by students and faculty for their personal needs, combined with the rich communications capabilities of UC, can be very attractive to an institution s core constituents. Strengthening and unifying the institution s image and brand. By offering a unified services suite that is consistently available to all users on campus and those attending satellite locations, institutions can bolster their images in the academic marketplace. 6 All references to Park University are based on Avaya engagements with Park University, use of which has been approved by the university s administration. Press release 6 7

5 HARNESSING THE CLOUD WITH UC Cloud-based applications particularly cloud-based , calendaring and personal productivity and collaboration suites look very attractive to institutions of higher learning. Not only can they help reduce operating expenses, but they also facilitate collaboration and learning a winning combination by almost any measure. However, colleges and universities want to reap these benefits without giving up the user efficiency, productivity and enhanced communications capabilities enabled by their UC implementations. By properly linking their existing campus UC systems to cloud applications using a software-only solution, institutions can achieve the best of all worlds with an integrated UC-cloud deployment that bumps up the collaboration and productivity benefits of both cloud and UC to the next level. UC-CLOUD INTEGRATION VIGNETTES Make faculty, staff and administration more available, responsive and productive. Bob, a faculty member, is collaborating with a colleague John who is an adjunct professor with a full-time industry job off campus. They are working on a joint research paper with the sections that urgently need to be finalized. Because John is often on the move, his whereabouts are often a mystery to Bob. Bob, using his cloud-based /calendaring application, sees that John is available. He clicks to dial John, but because John is not at his office, John has the option to pick up the call on his UC application on his iphone. Because the cloud-based and UC applications are integrated, Bob and John successfully connect and bring closure to the open items remaining in their research report. Build greater capacity for collaborative learning between students, and between students and faculty. Tom, a student, is worried about an upcoming exam and wants timely guidance from his professor. By using his school s Gmail/directory service, he sees the availability of the professor, who is currently on her campus office phone. The professor can t take a voice call, but is available via instant message, so Tom IMs her and quickly receives a response. He is satisfied with the interaction and how his issue was addressed. Streamline processes for students to seek academic help, advisement and student services so the students stay on track and achieve a positive campus experience. Sue is a freshman and has been having difficulty navigating through her academic options, but couldn t meet with her academic adviser during office drop-in hours. While using her cloud-based online directory and calendaring service, she sees that her adviser is available for a phone call. Seizing the opportunity, she clicksto-call from her desktop application and through the integration of the cloud-based app with the campus phone system, she rings the adviser s office phone and successfully conducts a call to resolve her questions. THE ESSENTIALS Unified messaging. The ability to integrate messaging solutions to deliver voice and fax access from cloud-based applications, and the ability to access cloud-based over the phone. Rich on-hook/off-hook presence. Integrated phone on-hook/off-hook presence with cloud-based apps allows users to see who is on or off the phone and initiate click-to-call to a phone extension. Calendar-integrated mobility. Personal, shared and public calendars integrated with phone voice mail greetings and mobility settings enable find-me/follow-me functionality. UC Web services. Both desktop and Web gadgets enable full dialing, presence and corporate phone search functionality from any operating system or browser. UC for mobile devices. The ability to integrate Android, ios, Blackberry and Windows devices with existing UC systems for station-to-station dialing and inbound and outbound calling through campus phone systems. Speech access. Navigate contacts, calendar, and over the phone, leveraging dual-tone multiple-frequency (DTMF) and speech commands for offline hands-free access to accounts. Fax services. Integrated fax services for fax messaging and outbound faxing from any application, including Web applications. 8 9

6 CONTACTING ESNA ESNA TECHNOLOGIES INC. 30 West Beaver Creek Rd., Suite 101 Richmond Hill ON Canada L4B 3K1 Tel Fax Web. FOR HARDWARE AND SUPPORT Tel FOR DOCUMENTATION REQUEST AND FEEDBACK Copyright & Trademarks by Esna Technologies Inc. All rights reserved.