As establishments of upper training search methods to handle scholar retention, they’re more and more turning to applied sciences that promise extra of an “at residence” expertise, driving better engagement and safety for his or her customers, whereas being easy and dependable to make use of. However typically ignored 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 mates at Cisco. As we speak, partially one in every of 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 best testaments is we now have a community refresh fund which permits us to proactively cycle out community tools frequently. However it doesn’t imply it’s at all times funded completely.
In some instances, we’ve received these switches which were on the market working for eleven, even twelve years . . . they usually’re simply working like champs. They’re doing precisely what they’re speculated to. That’s such a testomony to Cisco’s construct high quality and their {hardware} capabilities. It’s simply doing what it’s speculated to do . . . in a means that you could belief. It’s only a stable product. We’ve been actually profitable with Cisco. It’s been an ideal relationship.
The soundness that has come from that has been key, it’s been superb. We’re in a position to do some issues which can be past what we should always have the ability to do with the variety of people who we now have. As a result of we’re not having to continuously 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 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 take 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 speculated to — and it doesn’t actually work that means in a college community. So, we’ve been working to implement Cisco’s resolution, person outlined networking (UDN), to enhance that state of affairs, enhance the best way that units 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 state of affairs and resolution.
Q: How are you leveraging automation to reinforce your community?
A: We’re primarily utilizing Cisco Catalyst Heart for person 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 will 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 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 feel community safety is inherent, it’s one thing that’s vital. We see it at each stage of the campus community. As a result of we’ve been engaged on this UDN resolution, scholar community safety has been prime of thoughts.
We’ve been attempting to place this resolution 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 somewhat 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 up
Now that we’ve taken a quick 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 Greatest Expertise: Exploring the Roles and Applied sciences of Expertise Pushed Establishments in Larger Training. Be part of our Cisco training consultants as they go deeper to discover the worth, methods, and applied sciences which can be remodeling student-centric experiences.
Plus, search for half two of our weblog sequence titled Creating A Safe Scholar-Centric Expertise: Taking Management, coming quickly.
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