| |
| |
Students Identify Top Priorities for Campus IT
 For higher education institutions, students make up a key customer constituency. When you make campus IT infrastructure decisions, do you know what they're expecting? To get some guidance, we recently surveyed more than 180 of our Campus Ambassadors — our on-campus "student evangelists" in more than 30 countries around the globe — about what technology features were most important to them.
Their responses provide insight to campus IT professionals looking to stretch IT budgets while maximizing student enrollment and retention.
Priority #1: Online Courses and Services
Our survey showed that students want online access. They want to be able to take classes and access educational resources — applications, registration, library content, and more — no matter where they are, whether it's on-campus, in their dorm rooms, or from an off-campus apartment. They also want to communicate more effectively with their professors and instructors — and that means being able to reach them outside of office hours.
The good news is that today, e-learning is a standard in higher education. Virtually all public higher education institutions, as well as a vast majority of private, for-profit institutions, now offer online classes. According to the Sloan Consortium, nearly 3.2 million students in the U.S. were taking at least one online course during the fall 2005 term. To support online learning, many campuses have also created blog sites and wikis, which are different ways of allowing students and faculty to share and collaborate.
Charles Reed, chancellor of the California State University system, envisions that "students may soon meet with professors once a week and then use simulations, virtual worlds, and downloads to complete coursework."
As head of the largest four-year university system in the U.S. — with 23 campuses, 46,000 employees and more than 400,000 students — Reed said he sees students becoming more like telecommuters. They might meet with faculty and peers one day a week on campus, and then use simulations, virtual worlds and downloaded information the rest of the week to complete coursework. "It's not an either-or thing. We need the 'high touch,' but we need the high tech at the same time," said Reed.1
Priority #2: Mobility and Accessibility
Wireless access is another student must-have — not just for socializing, but for completing real coursework.
During a panel interview at Sun's recent Worldwide Education and Research Conference, Lorrie Ma, a 23-year-old junior studying mechanical engineering and marketing at Santa Clara University, commented that, "One of biggest things universities need to understand is that if they don't provide Wi-Fi access points, people can't communicate with peers for group work or collaborative activities."
And that's no small disconnect, given that Ma said she keeps in touch with as many as 100 people on the Web each day, including friends and classmates.2
|
Students want choices in how they access the campus network.
|
|
|
But students want choices in how they access the campus network. They want alternate delivery mechanisms such as laptops, phones, and PDAs that offer anytime, anywhere access to content, libraries, and other services, such as registration. For example, podcasts have become a new way to listen to lectures on the go. In fact, universities like Stanford and U.C. Berkeley have posted course podcasts to iTunes.
Sun Mobility Solution
At the same time, higher education institutions are looking for ways to give students access to online courses and services anywhere, anytime, without the maintenance and upgrade costs posed by PCs. To that end, Sun's Sun Ray thin clients provide an end-to-end architecture solution to enable mobility and accessibility.
Desktops based on ultra-thin Sun Ray clients, powered by Sun Fire servers and the Secure Network Application Platform, transform desktops into secure and mobile workplaces. Users — students, faculty, and administrative employees — can access their own computing environment via a secure, personal Java Card. Students can access campus resources quickly, easily, and securely from any location where Sun Rays are located.
Priority #3: Open Content and Technologies
The third major point our survey revealed is that students don't want to be limited to proprietary applications. The Campus Ambassadors responding to our survey said that they see open source as critical to their use of technology, including software, tools, and applications. These student developers want to be able to innovate. They also want complete interoperability — they don't want to find out that one tool or application doesn't work with another one. And of course, being on student budgets, they want their software tools and applications for free!
The Sun Campus Ambassador Program
To help meet student demand for open content and technologies, Sun's Campus Ambassadors are facilitating the adoption of open source technologies on campus. These technologies and open source projects include the Solaris 10 OS, Java technology-based systems, community projects such as the OpenSolaris project and OpenSPARC technology project; and the NetBeans integrated development environment (IDE).
Sun provides the Campus Ambassadors with free training and support; in turn, ambassadors help student developers take advantage of Sun's robust portfolio of high-value, no-cost resources, such as free Web-based training, free developer tools, open source technologies and communities, and easily accessible technical support via forums and communities.
The program has met with huge success, with more than 180 Campus Ambassadors in more than 30 countries.
"The people at Sun are a great mentors and the internship opportunity helps enhance students' careers," said Fahad Hussain, Sun Campus Ambassador at San Jose State University. "Sun works closely with the universities to equip students with advanced skills, hands-on experience with leading-edge, open source technologies, and the confidence to create new technologies.
"Not only does Sun offer training and support, the dialogue goes both ways," Hussain said. "Sun is interested in hearing what we really need to get from our IT education and be ready to make a difference in the business world." For more information on student programs at Sun, visit the Student Zone.
Questions or comments? Please email education_news@sun.com
1 "Universities register for virtual future" Stefanie Olsen, CNET (Article also appeared on ZDNet)
February 7, 2007
2 "Students offer Net advice to colleges" Stefanie Olsen CNET
February 7, 2007
| |
