As establishments of upper schooling search methods to deal with pupil retention, they’re more and more turning to applied sciences that promise extra of an “at dwelling” expertise, driving higher engagement and safety for his or her customers, whereas being easy and dependable to make use of. However usually 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 buddies at Cisco. In the present day, 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 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 have to do. And Cisco’s achieved this for Biola — and it’s achieved it nicely.

I feel one of many biggest testaments is we have now 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 instances, we’ve obtained 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 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 approach you could belief. It’s only a stable product. We’ve been actually profitable with Cisco. It’s been an important 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 can be past what we must always be capable of do with the variety of people who we have now. As a result of we’re not having to always firefight, we’re not diverting time to place out the fires. We will deal with 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 attempting 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 units, their Apple TV’s, gaming programs, all that stuff like that and every part works the way in which it’s speculated 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 situation, enhance the way in which 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 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 nicely, 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 operating as rapidly as attainable.

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

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, pupil community safety has been high of thoughts.

We’ve been attempting to place this answer in place, partly as a result of it permits pupil units to work simply collectively, plus it secures them within the course of. It gives a bit containerized community for pupil 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 quick 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 Increased Schooling. Be part of our Cisco schooling specialists 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 Pupil-Centric Expertise: Taking Management, coming quickly.

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