Adopting a new technology isn’t an easy step to take, but it’s a very important decision that can deeply change – for the better – the way that a higher education institution is managed, taking it to a higher level of efficiency and goal achievements.

In the last years an increasing number of US universities and colleges have been adopting cloud computing solutions and educational software, basically to provide better learning experiences to students and to optimize assets and resources.

According to The 2015 Campus Computing Survey, an every-year study driven by US-based Campus Computing Project, shows that important advances have occurred in several fields of educational management, especially in learning and outcomes.

“Almost all (94%) of the fall 2015 survey participants  – the survey says – who represent 417 two- and four- year public, private colleges and universities, agree or strongly agree that ‘digital curricular resources make learning more efficient and effective for students.’”

The study adds that “most (87%) report that ‘digital curricular resources provide a richer and more personalized learning experience than traditional print materials.’ Finally, the survey participants also overwhelmingly agree (96%) that ‘adaptive learning technology has great potential to improve learning outcomes for students.’”

Now, we commonly hear that an external solution is too expensive and too complicated to implement, and that is why cloud computing should be a viable solution only for big and well-financed universities.  But there are clear examples of small institutions that have successfully adopted this kind of technology.

The Marian University – an Indianapolis-based higher ed institution with about 3,000 students – has good experiences to tell. Peter Williams, assistant vice president and CIO, explains that they use cloud solutions for mass communications application, administrative modules, predictive analytics and workflow.

“Marian’s medical school has substantially increased the number of cloud services used by the university, adding electronic textbooks, a lecture capture system, electronic polling and an assessment service,” Williams adds.

“Our goal in IT is to be as efficient and effective as possible,” he says. “If we can save staff time on maintaining services, we can focus on helping our users leverage those tools to be successful.”

Another case of successful implementation of cloud computing can be shown by The University of Montclair (New Jersey, US), where nearly 20,000 student email accounts and the institution’s learning management system were moved to the cloud. 

Montclair’s Associate Vice President of Enterprise Technology Services, Jeff Giacobbe, underlines that “the value lies in the ways they accelerate the speed of innovation and free you from day-to-day maintenance.”