As establishments of upper schooling search methods to handle pupil retention, they’re more and more turning to applied sciences that promise extra of an “at house” expertise, driving larger 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 associates at Cisco. As we speak, partly 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 must do. And Cisco’s accomplished this for Biola — and it’s accomplished it nicely.
I feel one of many best testaments is we’ve got a community refresh fund which permits us to proactively cycle out community gear regularly. But it surely doesn’t imply it’s at all times funded completely.
In some instances, we’ve received these switches which have been on the market operating for eleven, even twelve years . . . they usually’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 method that you may belief. It’s only a stable product. We’ve been actually profitable with Cisco. It’s been a fantastic relationship.
The steadiness that has come from that has been key, it’s been superb. We’re capable of do some issues which might be past what we should always have the ability to do with the variety of people who we’ve got. As a result of we’re not having to consistently 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 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 house 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 method in a college community. So, we’ve been working to implement Cisco’s answer, person 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 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 nicely, so we will begin automating the method of software program upgrades to assist velocity up the method of {hardware} alternative.
So, once 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 shortly as potential.
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 important. 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 offers slightly 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 wish 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 wish 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 Training. Be a part of our Cisco schooling specialists as they go deeper to discover the worth, methods, and applied sciences which might 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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