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 typically ignored is the community behind all of it. When Biola College, a personal Christian college in Southern California, sought options, they reached out to their mates at Cisco. Immediately, partly one in all our two-part sequence 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 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 must do. And Cisco’s carried out this for Biola — and it’s carried out it nicely.
I feel one of many biggest testaments is we’ve got a community refresh fund which permits us to proactively cycle out community tools frequently. Nevertheless it doesn’t imply it’s all the time funded completely.
In some circumstances, we’ve bought these switches which were on the market operating for eleven, even twelve years . . . they usually’re simply working like champs. They’re doing precisely what they’re presupposed to. That’s such a testomony to Cisco’s construct high quality and their {hardware} capabilities. It’s simply doing what it’s presupposed 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 excellent relationship.
The soundness that has come from that has been key, it’s been wonderful. We’re capable of do some issues which can be past what we must always be capable to do with the variety of those that we’ve got. As a result of we’re not having to continually firefight, we’re not diverting time to place out the fires. We are able to 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 the whole lot works the best way it’s presupposed to — and it doesn’t actually work that approach in a college community. So, we’ve been working to implement Cisco’s answer, person outlined networking (UDN), to enhance that situation, 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 situation and answer.
Q: How are you leveraging automation to reinforce your community?
A: We’re primarily utilizing Cisco Catalyst Middle 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 a complete.
And we’re simply beginning to add our wired community infrastructure into Cisco Catalyst Middle as nicely, so we will begin automating the method of software program upgrades to assist velocity up the method of {hardware} substitute.
So, once we put new switches in place on campus, we will 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 operating as shortly as attainable.
Q: Are you able to inform us a bit about your strategy to community safety at Biola, and why it will be important?
A: I feel community safety is inherent, it’s one thing that’s essential. We see it at each stage 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 gives just a little 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 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 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 part of our Cisco training consultants as they go deeper to discover the worth, methods, and applied sciences which can be reworking 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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