IBM education, for example, chose the EDUCAUSE conference as the venue in which to unveil its new Cloud Academy, a global forum for educators, researchers, and IT personnel to pursue cloud computing initiatives, develop skills, and share best practices for reducing operating costs while improving quality and access to education.
According to Michael King, IBM’s vice president for global education, 17 educational institutions worldwide are the first to participate in the Cloud Academy.
“Cloud computing makes it easier for everyone in education – including students, faculty, and administrators – to gain immediate access to a wide range of new educational resources and research applications and tools,” King said. “The IBM Cloud Academy will advance awareness and adoption of cloud computing, including best practices for education and research institutions.”
Specific cloud-computing applications also were on display at EDUCAUSE.
DubMeNow’s DUB application, for example, allows users to create a mobile address book that is always current. Users fill out a “virtual” business card from DubMeNow’s web site, and a downloadable application lets iPhone, BlackBerry, and Google Android smart-phone users store each other’s contact information by sending the virtual cards from one phone to another.
If one of your contacts updates his or her information on the DubMeNow web site, the information is updated automatically on your phone. And if you lose a phone or buy a new device, you can transfer your DUB contacts to your new phone easily from the “cloud.” The application is a convenient, reliable alternative to hauling around piles of business cards, DubMeNow says.
Google brought student representatives from across the country to the conference, where they discussed the many useful–and free–applications hosted by the internet giant. Daniel Miller, a University of Washington student, said he makes study guides on Google Docs, and the Google Spreadsheets application has “saved hours” in helping him study for statistics exams.
Learning Objects’ Campus Pack harnesses the Web 2.0 power of podcasts, social learning sites, blogs, and wikis to create an online student environment delivered via the cloud. The program gives educators easy access to student work and provides for easy-to-use peer review, the company said.
Microsoft demonstrated its Live@edu cloud service, which offers a free storage solution for college students who rely heavily on their laptops and smart phones to complete homework assignments and study for exams. Live@edu gives each student 10 gigabytes of storage using Microsoft’s Outlook Live, and 25 GB of web-based storage with Windows Live SkyDrive.
And Pearson’s newly released Learning Studio combines two learning platforms, Pearson eCollege and Frontier, allowing IT administrators to create multi-faceted learning environments for students who study on campus, take blended classes, or earn a degree online. This cloud-computing service creates a dependable course web site so professors can focus on teaching, not managing a web site prone to errors, Pearson said.
Enhancing ‘customer’ relations
A number of EDUCAUSE exhibitors demonstrated technology-based solutions for helping schools interact more effectively with their stakeholders.
For example, LivePerson Pro features an online chat solution that will keep visitors to a college’s web site from leaving in frustration when they can’t find an answer to their question.
The system allows users to monitor visitors to their site in real time, invite visitors to chat, and answer questions when a visitor submits a query. You can make chat available whenever site visitors request it, or proactively invite visitors to chat if you see signs that they’re about to abandon your site. Pre-crafted answers to common questions make it easy for school communications staff to answer routine questions and chat with more than one site visitor at the same time.
Perceptis’ 24-7 Enterprise Service Centers have proven valuable for colleges and universities flooded with student questions about financial aid. Perceptis representatives are there to answer phone calls, helping students avoid complicated, time-consuming call trees that can be many layers deep, only to finish with an impersonal voice message.
And Datatel’s Recruiter program helps college admissions officials target prospective students deemed most attractive to the campus based on complex analytics. Recruiter will give frequent updates on how close a college is to its long-term admissions goals, predicting applicants’ probability of enrolling in courses.
Hobsons offers tools focused on student recruitment and retention, including EMT Retain, which features an early warning system to let college counselors know when a student is showing at-risk behavior, such as infrequent class participation or slumping exam and homework grades.
Sungard’s online services include helping campus officials improve student retention rates with proactive identification of students deemed at risk, using myriad communication tools (including Twitter) to direct those students to professors or tutors.
And TopSchool’s Student Lifecycle Management program enables colleges and universities to track students from their first application throughout their education and past their graduation, allowing schools to keep in touch with alumni as well. TopSchool’s ad-hoc reporting tool lets campus IT officials customize student reports, focusing on relevant data by using a drag-and-drop function.
Online-learning solutions
Drawing from more than 150 data sources, Acxiom provides a voluminous database of information on prospective students to aid in recruitment. But the company also demonstrated its solutions for helping colleges and universities validate the identity of distance-learning students and battle academic dishonesty–an issue that has taken on added importance with last year’s passage of a law requiring higher-education institutions to take steps to do this. (See “ED OKs proctors, secure logins for online tests.”)
Acxiom’s software produces targeted questions that students must answer before taking an online exam, and the system raises red flags when students might have cheated.
Another online-learning solution on display at the conference was Three Rivers Systems’ CAMS, reportedly used by more than 300 campuses worldwide to automate the often complex administration of web-based college courses, removing a time-consuming task for IT staff. The system reportedly allows students to move from online registration to online classes immediately, without manual syncing or IT involvement.
Moodlerooms, which helps schools implement the open-source learning management system Moodle, demonstrated its “joule” software at the conference. Joule takes Moodle to the next level, Moodlerooms said, with new features such as enhanced reports and notifications, easier content management, automated administration, and course templating.
And Wimba announced that its new Collaboration Suite 6.0, which creates a personalized, web-based learning environment for online courses, is now available for Moodle. Professors can distribute increasingly popular MP4 files–digital audio and video streams–to a variety of social networking sites using the collaborative environment, Wimba said.
21st-century instruction
CDW-G recently published a report showing that 74 percent of college faculty use technology in their everyday courses, and 81 percent of students surveyed said they use technology every day to prepare for class–up from 63 percent in 2008. However, only two out of 10 educators strongly believe their campus is adequately preparing students to use technology in the workforce, the survey found.
- Lawmakers to colleges: No more social media prying - April 25, 2013
- Number of college applications affected by social media triples - October 9, 2012
- Gates Foundation supports college readiness apps - September 28, 2012