As establishments of upper training search methods to deal with scholar 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. However usually neglected is the community behind all of it.
When Biola College, a non-public Christian college in Southern California, sought options, they reached out to their buddies at Cisco. At the moment, partially considered one of our two-part collection on making a safe student-centric expertise, we talk about 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 clients 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 must do. And Cisco’s carried out this for Biola — and it’s carried out it effectively.
I believe one of many biggest testaments is we now have a community refresh fund which permits us to proactively cycle out community gear frequently. Nevertheless it doesn’t imply it’s all the time funded completely.
In some circumstances, we’ve acquired 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 alleged to. That’s such a testomony to Cisco’s construct high quality and their {hardware} capabilities. It’s simply doing what it’s alleged to do . . . in a manner you can belief. It’s only a stable product. We’ve been actually profitable with Cisco. It’s been an incredible relationship.
The soundness that has come from that has been key, it’s been wonderful. We’re in a position to do some issues which are past what we should always have the ability to do with the variety of those that we now have. As a result of we’re not having to continually firefight, we’re not diverting time to place out the fires. We will give attention to innovating issues.
Q: What sort of challenges have been you going through?
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 have a look at connecting all their units, their Apple TV’s, gaming methods, all that stuff like that and every part works the best way it’s alleged to — and it doesn’t actually work that manner 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 best way 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 state of affairs 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 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 will 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 method to community safety at Biola, and why it will be important?
A: I believe community safety is inherent, it’s one thing that’s essential. 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 supplies a bit of 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 folks from them, but in addition permits them to ask different college students into their UDN, too, to allow them to share the units 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 Finest Expertise: Exploring the Roles and Applied sciences of Expertise Pushed Establishments in Larger Schooling. Be part of our Cisco training 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 collection titled Creating A Safe Pupil-Centric Expertise: Taking Management, coming quickly.
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