Universities integrate three different worlds into one: academics, employees and students. Each world has particular needs and requirements, and campus management needs to coordinate them all to provide a solid learning experience, which is one of the essential missions of any higher education institution.
Now, the way that campus authorities manage these facilities and all related assets are constantly evolving – or at least they should be evolving – according to external and internal trends and changes. In the last years, most of these changes have been driven by the giant steps that technology has taken towards a comprehensive and interactive experience with humans.
In order to properly answer this new reality, higher education institutions worldwide have been also adopting technology and software solutions to plan and coordinate campus operations, enhance strategic planning and even be prepared for assessment and accreditation process.
We’ve just said “worldwide” because campus management is an important issue in every major higher education hub, not only in developing countries, but also in countries with more than a century of higher education tradition. Let's take a look, for example, at what Ph.D. Alexandra den Heijer, academic of the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands says about it:
“Over time, managing a university campus has become increasingly complex and challenging; it also involves many more stakeholders, opportunities and pitfalls than before. Recent moves to diminish public involvement and funding for universities have put pressure on the internal allocation of resources and institutional leaders are having to weigh investments in property and other facilities against investments in human resources at the university and faculty levels. They are also comparing the added value of decisions relating to campus infrastructure with the that of investing in more faculty members, more students or new research programmes. As a result, there is an ever-greater need for evidence-based information to support decision making.”
What are the main technological trends that universities can adopt to improve university campus management?
1. New learning spaces
Technology is allowing to expand the boundaries of the classroom and taking the lesson to a more practical scenario, where students can interact with the topic that they’re learning about (instead of just reading about it).
Josh Baron, the senior academic technology officer of Marist College, explains that universities are very interested in classroom redesigning and in the use of the online channel.
“We are actively exploring how we can use new open academic collaboration platforms to create, in an online environment, the type of ad hoc "academic commons" spaces that are now so prevalent on physical campuses. We have come to recognize that environments such as the learning management system, while great at supporting structured teaching and learning activities, are not ideal when supporting more informal forms of academic collaboration,” Baron says.
2. Gamification
This trend, that started several years ago as an uncommon side product of the video game industry, has gained a reputation in the global educational environment basically because it’s a great way to motivate students to learn. Now, if your campus has already developed – or it’s in the developing process – an online learning platform it would be easier to implement gamification tactics in the curriculum.
Related to this, Pam McQuesten, Vice President and CIO of Southwestern University, explains that “gamification is a design philosophy that identifies the user as a player in creating a structured and rule-based experience that builds upon a person's natural instincts for mastery, self-expression, socializing and competition".
On the other hand, Ed Chapel, Senior Vice President and Former VP of IT of Montclair State University, recognizes that “the demographics make it clear that gaming (and thus gamification strategies) resonate with the undergraduate and, I dare say, graduate populations served by higher education. It provides a new model for motivating students and reinforcing key learning objectives by means of instructional design strategies that can be learning-outcomes oriented.”
3. Digitalization
This is a huge step beyond just digitalizing things. This means to add value to a university's digital assets. For example, Bob Bramucci, Vice Chancellor of Technology and Learning Services of South Orange County Community College, explains that there is a deep difference between just scanning a paper book, and transforming it into a PDF document, then creating a multimedia version of that book “that spawns a robust online community,” Bramucci says.
4. Next-generation online security
This is clearly one of the pain points of campus management, specially for IT managers. “The major upgrade available with new technology is the incorporation of contextual awareness. Rather than treat each network connection as an isolated issue that the tools must assess with predefined rules, next-generation technology maintains situational awareness. It incorporates context about the user identity, the nature of an application, time of day and other core facts to make better-informed security decisions,” Ed Tech magazine stands.
5. Mobile security
Related to the previous trend, it is already a fact that campuses are a mobile-first computing environment. IT university campus management used to worry about external menaces that might attack wired-connected computers, but how to protect wireless devices inside the campus? Security technology has been specializing in mobile device management (MDM).
According to Ed Tech magazine, these kinds of solutions “provides security administrators a centralized platform for administering security settings on both institution-owned and personally owned mobile devices. MDM technology allows administrators to require the use of device passcodes, configure Wi-Fi network settings, remotely wipe lost or stolen devices and apply consistent security profiles across different mobile operating systems. MDM technology gives institutions the ability to allow the use of many different devices while remaining confident in the security of information they contain.”
6. Visitors control
An essential issue, specially if we consider the recent tragic events that happened in several European countries, and the previous experience in North American schools and higher education institutions.
Many campuses have already adopted panic buttons, metal detectors, classroom door locks, bullet-proof windows and fences, but the threat continues. In this field, technology still has a debt with universities. In fact, Campus Safety magazine says that 43% of US campuses authorities recognizes a lack of visitor management system. That’s why systems like ID card access, digitally coded door locks and hi-def video cameras are been increasingly adopted by higher education institutions.
Which of these technological trends do you think is more challenging for your university? We invite you to share your opinion.
