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Most Popular of 2015, No. 2: 20 should-know technology tidbits from EDUCAUSE


A quick-hitting guide to technologies, solutions and business talk from the 2015 EDUCAUSE exhibitor hall.

educause-conference-technology[Editor’s note: Based off of Google Analytics, this story was our second most popular article. It was originally published on Nov. 3, 2015.]

Enabling personalized learning, ensuring mobile capacity and security, and partnering with industry leaders to provide game-changing solutions dominated the exhibit hall at this year’s EDUCAUSE 2015. Come take a look at what innovative technology companies have in store for today’s fast-paced higher education institution:

(Listed in alphabetical order of company mentioned)

1.An Author Tool for Online learning

Acrobatiq, an adaptive learning-focused company, announced the launch of its Smart Author™ Adaptive Learning Platform—the first in a new generation of enterprise-level course authoring and data analytics solutions for higher education institutions to develop and deliver online courses and programs. The company said Smart Author has web-based tools to develop outcomes models; content and assessment tied to outcomes; adaptive course delivery; and analytics showing who is learning and who is not, which content works and which content does not, and where to focus time in making improvements. Institutions can use Smart Author to extend educational access online through mobile-ready seat or competency-based programs; to facilitate blended instruction; and to improve learning outcomes in “red flag” or traditionally high failure courses by developing “smart” courseware that personalizes student learning. Acrobatiq Smart Author is a cloud-based software-as-a-service solution, purchased as an annual subscription and supported by professional services to ensure successful and sustainable implementation. For more information on Acrobatiq’s solutions for higher education, or to request a meeting, please visit here.

2.A Simpler Way to Access Cloud Security

Akamai Technologies, Inc., a content delivery network (CDN) services, revealed its intent to join the Internet2 NET+ initiative in order to improve the ability of colleges and universities to respond to threat of DDoS and other cyber attacks. Akamai’s Cloud Security Solutions, a suite of security solutions including DDoS mitigation, threat analysis, and dedicated site defense, has entered the NET+ Evaluation stage. NET+ streamlines the process and helps make it more affordable for colleges and universities to purchase cloud-based technology solutions. Akamai was at EDUCAUSE to discuss how it can help higher education institutions protect their online assets from DDoS and other web application threats. “Cybersecurity is an issue that is top of mind for colleges and universities, as they seek to protect data and information from students, researchers, and faculty,” said Shel Waggener, Internet2, senior vice president. “The NET+ initiative leverages the R&E community to vet services and share insights on solutions and applications that have been beneficial for others, and we are pleased that the Internet2 community can now access Akamai’s industry perspectives, experience, and technology.”

3.Meeting Mobile Campus Demands

ALE, operating under the brand Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, is continuing to invest in delivering wireless LAN solutions with its new 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Point. As the world’s reliance and use of mobile devices continues to grow, enterprises as diverse as higher education are faced with the challenge of having the appropriate network capacity to support the increase of users’ and traffic. The new Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess 320 wireless 802.11AC Wave 2 Access Point provides the benefits of Wave 2 WLAN technology including:

  • Dynamic multi-user multiple input/multiple output (MU-MIMO) technology, providing increased network capacity and boosting network efficiency,
  • Increased Wi-Fi performance by delivering at least a third more throughput,
  • Providing better long-term investment protection over 802.11ac Wave1 or 802.11n technology.

The new OmniAccess 320 Access Point aims to enable the growing number of mobile devices to share Wi-Fi bandwidth and relieves wireless performance issues in the network. The new access point is the latest product in the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Unified Access technology roadmap to deliver solutions for the mobile campus that increase network capacity, boost network performance and provide a consistent customer experience for wired and wireless devices.

4.Virtual Collaboration to Learners with Disabilities

Blackboard Inc. discussed two accessibility milestones for the latest version of its online virtual collaboration tool Blackboard Collaborate™. According to SSB Bart Group, Blackboard’s accessibility partner, Blackboard’s browser-based web conferencing tool supports the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0 at Level AA, which includes features like live captions, 4.5:1 contrast, consistent navigation, and more. SSB Bart Group also gave the technology approval for meeting Section 508 standards in the U.S., which apply standards to electronic and information technology used by federal agencies. One example of an organization currently using these accessibility features is at the University of Montana, where the school’s Accessibility Interest Group uses the new Ultra experience of Blackboard Collaborate to conduct their regular webinars. “It’s extremely important to us that we use tools and technologies that share the same values and standards that we’re working hard to achieve through our Accessibility Interest Group,” said Marlene Zentz, Senior Instructional Designer and Accessibility Specialist at the University of Montana. “The new Blackboard Collaborate is not only the tool we use to allow our campus leaders to keep working toward making teaching and learning an inclusive process on our campus, but the tool that our disabled students themselves can use to collaborate and learn at their highest potential.” Read more about Blackboard’s commitment to accessibility or get involved in the company’s ongoing accessibility work, by joining the Accessibility Community.

5.Cloud Content + LMS = Personalized Learning
A platform of educational resources powered by cloud technology, Boundless announced an alliance partnership with the Canvas learning management system (LMS) from Instructure. The integration will give Canvas users access to the Boundless library of more than 10,000 pieces of digital content in over 20 subjects, fully vetted and customizable with Boundless’ content-creation services, study materials and assessment items.  Boundless is currently available to all Canvas users through the EduAppCenter. Access to Boundless is free for instructors and allows educators to create content and harness real-time data analytics to personalize education and improve student outcomes. For students, Boundless provides content at $29.99 per student, per class. Content is modular, openly licensed and tagged with assessment items to support mapping content to learning outcomes. All content contributions to Boundless are reviewed by a team of experts, and courseware can be accessed on computer, tablet or on its e-reading application, available on any mobile device. To learn more, visit here.

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6.An LMS that Gathers Data from the Entire Ecosystem

Brightspace Autumn’15 release from software company D2L aims to solve some of the biggest challenges facing education–low engagement and high dropout rates–by enabling teachers to receive student learning data from across the learning ecosystem and interact with learners in a more mobile way. Instructors using Brightspace will receive real-time intelligence about their students’ learning activities on mobile devices, online or in class. “As education continues to evolve, D2L remains committed to reinventing its platform for the mobile-first, cloud-first world,” said John Baker, CEO of D2L. The company has also enhanced its analytics solution, Brightspace Insights™, and introduced The Learning Analytics Blueprint, comprised of a team of experts in change management, data governance, and data science that can help customers manage their analytics-driven education transformation. The Brightspace Autumn ‘15 release includes dozens of new features. For more information, visit here.

7.Student-Centric Mobile Products

A company with a theme this year’s theme was Cengage Learning and its “Recharge with Cengage Learning” which focused on best practices in implementing education technology and student involvement. The company promoted this theme by highlighting its expanded institutional offerings, including the company’s student-centric mobile products and the recent acquisition of the education technology company Learning Objects. The acquisition of Learning Objects—which aims to offer customized and adaptive learning programs and courses to higher education institutions through its content-agnostic digital learning environment and instructional design services—will help institutions create both competency-based and traditional online programs and courses integrating publisher content, open educational resources, faculty content and other ed tech vendors’ tools. Chief Technology Officer George Moore spoke to data-driven decision-making, with booth demos of the recently-launched MindTap Mobile and 4LTR Press Online. In addition, Learning Objects General Manager Derek Hamner and Chief Learning Officer Jon Mott, Ph.D., discussed how the company provides customizable learning solutions for institutions and publishing partners.

8.Online Collaboration to the Next Level

Citrix announced that Campbell Law School has standardized on Citrix for lecture capture/recording, hosting, online collaboration and file sharing. The campus says it supports the educational needs of its students, as well as the research and teaching demands of the faculty and staff due in large part to workflow and communications cloud technology through Citrix ShareFile, Podio and GoToMeeting products. For example, professors and students use Podio, a cloud-based collaboration tool, as a single, integrated environment to procure information in an accessible, integrated manner. Likewise, as Campbell Law offers students a flexible learning environment, GoToMeeting allows students to form group discussions and meetings from any location and device, as well as share notes, assignments and review work – all in a collaborative setting. “Legal technology is changing quickly and dramatically, and it’s critically important that we stay abreast of the changes,” said J. Rich Leonard, Dean, Campbell Law School. “Many of our students end up in solo firms or small firms. They’re looking for new and cutting-edge software that will let them do core legal work more effectively than they ever have before, but that will also let them run their business affairs, keep up with their accounts and stay in touch with their clients – all with an integrated system. In this vein, the Citrix solutions fit the bill.” Find out more here.

9.Turning Analytics into Action

Two large companies, Civitas Learning and Echo360 announced a partnership that aims to allow colleges and universities to create a more complete picture of student success on campus thanks to actionable analytics. Increasingly, higher ed institutions are using historic and predictive data to identify student challenges or opportunities to accelerate, intervene or inspire effectively, to improve learning and completion. Civitas Learning is using data science to build institution-specific predictive models for student intake, persistence and graduation. Many schools, however, lack real-time information about whether a student is engaged and learning in class. Echo360’s teaching and learning platform is used by over 3 million college students to take time-synched lecture notes, ask questions in class, review lectures, build study guides, flag confusing content, and collaborate with peers and faculty during and after class. Through the partnership, institutions will be able to integrate these classroom insights highlighted by Echo360 into Civitas Learning’s analytics ecosystem.

10.A Platform to Address Retention

Ellucian announced Howard University as a beta partner for Ellucian Pilot, the company’s student success tool to help improve institutional accountability, retention and student outcomes. Under this partnership, Howard University will use Ellucian Pilot to drive measurable student outcomes and help guide the product’s development. Ellucian Pilot, which can be implemented on-premise or in the cloud, allows institutions to address retention, accountability and success by providing a holistic view of each individual student’s experience. With Ellucian Pilot, institutions can share information about students without silos, across campus departments to deliver support. Ellucian Pilot uses the power of analytics and social engagement to intervene early with students if they’re struggling to meet standards. “Howard University is a beacon for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, as well as other like-minded institutions. It’s not just our goal to graduate students within four years, but to do so in a way that sets them up for success in careers and in life,” said Precious Smith, Deputy Director, Center for Academic Excellence at Howard University. “Ellucian Pilot allows us to wear our laurels as we prepare our current students to be service-driven leaders of the future.” For more information on the product, visit here.

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11.A Next-Gen Personalized Learning Solution

According to Elsevier, a provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, its new personalized learning solution, “Sherpath,” is the first nursing educational platform to integrate content, assessment and simulations personalized to each program, course and student. Sherpath uses data, analytics and adaptive techniques to track students’ interactions with content, assessments and simulations while providing a learning path for each student. Sherpath allows faculty to customize the learning modules to their specific course outcomes, and programs will now have real-time learning analytics to monitor their program against accrediting body standards and student success towards licensure. “We understand that educators and academic institutions are struggling with incomplete, disparate technologies that address small pieces of the puzzle without offering a complete integrated solution, one that marries trusted educational content with the best that technology and analytics has to offer,” said John Danaher, President, Elsevier Education. “Sherpath accomplishes that. It’s been designed from the ground up to address today’s on-the-go learning environment where students are often overwhelmed and pressed for time and instructors are challenged to teach them effectively wherever and whenever students can learn.” Additionally, healthcare program directors can use Sherpath to monitor each program, course and campus at their organizations to ensure accreditation compliancy. Sherpath is currently piloted in 15 schools throughout the U.S. and will be available commercially in Summer 2016. For more information, visit Sherpath online here.

12.A Brand New Open Lecture Platform

Founded in 2003, the same year that it launched what the company says is the world’s first external USB-based frame grabber, VGA2USB, and the VGA2WEB video conferencing product, Epiphan Video unveiled Pearl—a new open lecture platform. Pearl is a compact appliance that is fee-free and has more than four applications in the higher-ed setting. Multi-source lecture capture, creation of HD quality online courses, multichannel streaming and more is housed within one device. Check it out here.

13.Software-Driven Networking Solutions

Extreme Networks, Inc. touted that its software-driven networking solutions are helping its college and university clients deliver an adaptive, mobile learning environment to their campuses. The company showcased interactive demos that highlighted the company’s network application analytics, campus Wi-Fi, and stadium and arena Wi-Fi technology. One customer example included the University of Mount Union, which needed to adapt to meet the growing mobile demands of their students, faculty and staff. The University partnered with Extreme to upgrade its infrastructure with an integrated solution that allows them to increase network bandwidth by 2x to handle the growing number of users and devices on the network. “Students, faculty, and staff expect fast access to the Internet for a variety of applications and our goal is to make their experience as seamless as possible. With Extreme’s Purview solution, we are able to access reports about traffic, users and applications, which, in turn, empower us with the knowledge we need to secure and optimize the network and troubleshoot more efficiently.” For more information on the case study, click here. For more about Extreme, click here.

14.Reducing Redundancy and Transferring Credits

OnBase by Hyland hosted two sessions at EDUCAUSE, one live at the conference and another for virtual attendees. The live session featured Kirk Kelly, CIO of Portland State University and David Kieffer, senior director of enterprise applications at The Ohio State University. Kirk and David shared how several departmental systems introduced redundant technologies and how they reduced this redundancy through more scalable enterprise solutions. They discussed how an enterprise approach helped them review service-level agreements to better balance the autonomy of end user offices while aligning with institutional objectives. The virtual session featured John McGuthry, CIO of Cal Poly Pomona, who spoke about how he is refocusing the school’s technology to be more student-centric. He shared how overlapping technologies between ERP, CRM, ECM, and niche solutions compound the complexity of serving staff members and most importantly, students. This session will be available online through the EDUCAUSE website. The OnBase transfer credit evaluation solution was also a hot topic at the show, as some institutions are taking a different approach and using it as a competitive differentiator. Several schools have reduced the time required for evaluation by several weeks, providing the option for schools to send transfer credit evaluations along with admissions letters. Participating institutions have said this helps students make more informed decisions about their path to graduation, not to mention increasing student yields.

15.Interactive Video and Display

Teachers and Learners can create interactive video experiences with the Sharp AQUOS BOARD interactive display system through the Kaltura platform. Kaltura, a video technology provider, announced a new partnership with Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America (SIICA), and together Kaltura and Sharp are collaborating to try and make learning a more personalized, immersive experience for users. When paired with the Kaltura video platform, users can access new features, like screen recording through Kaltura CaptureSpace, directly from the AQUOS BOARD display. Big-screen learning experiences can also now be recorded, shared and replayed from within the Kaltura platform anywhere, from any device.

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16.A Meeting of Giants

Blackboard, one of the largest Moodle providers, is adopting Microsoft’s Office 365 plugins for Moodle and offering it to their Moodlerooms customers worldwide. While the plugins have been adopted by multiple Moodle customers and partners around the world, Blackboard’s adoption of the plugins will be the largest adoption of its kind. Microsoft is also offering LMS integration and Learning Tools Interoperability support for both OneNote Class Notebooks and Office Mix, including integration with Canvas, Schoology, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Haiku and Moodle; and the company is offering updates to Office Lens and Office Clipper enabling users to save to One Note, Word and PowerPoint using their work or school accounts.

17.Cloud and Mobile to Drive Process

Today, cloud and mobile solutions are emerging as the cornerstone to ensure increased agility for higher education to deliver content, experiences, services, and technology to the campus community however and wherever they desire. Along those lines, Oracle made several product announcements A selection of these announcement include:

In addition, Oracle Higher Education announced:

  • Ohio State University Deploys Oracle Solutions to Help Streamline Compliance and Enhance Self-Service Functionality for Faculty, Staff, and Students.
  • Pittsburg State University Selects Oracle Applications Cloud to Modernize Human Resources, Financials, and Planning and Budgeting.

Here’s a full listing of Oracle’s announcements.

18.Doing Digital Content Right 

Pearson announced a partnership with the University of Missouri to bring Digital Direct Access programs to students. These programs aim to increase access to high quality, digital course content that prepares students for success from the first day of class. The programs lower costs for students and provide educators with insights into student performance, allowing for early intervention when needed. Other schools testing Digital Direct Access include Algonquin College and Indiana University. These institutions say they have successfully implemented similar models of providing affordable access to required course materials from the first day of class.  All three of the partners from the report participated in a well-attended presentation, “Transition to Digital: Strategies that Impact Education” during EDUCAUSE. Learn more here.

19.Using the IoT to Drive Research

SAP SE, a software and solutions business, discussed how more institutions are finding the value in a high-powered analytics and modeling platform with in-memory capabilities, which the company says can be found in its SAP HANA® solution; for example, in cancer research. SAP HANA and the SAP® Business Suite 4 SAP HANA suite form a “digital core” that can also improve customer experience, campus business processes, staff engagement, vendor collaboration and Internet of Things (IoT) integration, in addition to aiding processing-intensive research, said the company. SAP listed examples at work at The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich (ETH Zurich), which recently selected SAP S/4 HANA for its finance, human resources, logistics and business warehouse systems. ETH Zurich plans to replace all its Oracle databases with SAP HANA databases by mid-2016; Weill Cornell Medicine, and its selection of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud to support teaching, medical research and patient care; Duke University’s partnership with SAP to develop the SAP Fundraising Management application; and many others. For more information, visit the SAP News Center.

20.Virtual Technology for Innovation

According to Tim Merrigan, Vice President SLED Sales at VMware, “Customers are leveraging new technology to provide access to curriculum for new students and faculty in online or distributed campus environments on an ever-widening range of personal devices, and all the while safeguarding personal and financial information.” For example, this September at the University of Wisconsin, the faculty introduced a digital lab environment for students that gave all students in the program the same desktop experience, no matter where they were physically located. The new program gave each student access to the same resources, as well as the ability to interact and collaborate with professors and other students throughout the process. The university, alongside its integrator partner Gantech, accomplished this in six weeks thanks to Wisconsin’s existing VMware Horizon VDI platform via Horizon Air, running on vCloud Air. Another example, mentioned Merrigan, includes the Rochester Institute of Technology, whose director of IT operations, Steve Bertino, spoke during EDUCAUSE on strategies in IT operations to benefit both employees and their institutions. In addition, RIT’s Academic Cloud, using a mix of VMware solutions including vCloud Air, vRealize, VMware Virtual SAN, NSX and others, will provide the platform for its Department of Computing Security’s penetration testing competition this November. The program is designed to address the ever increasing need for cybersecurity penetration testing professionals. Finally, Merrigan discussed the University of South Carolina to create a more dynamic learning environment that supports anytime access to information and greater student and faculty collaboration. The university’s VDI environment, also based on VMware Horizon, allows it to create course-specific learning experiences accessible via student’s personal devices. Today, there’s a 50/50 split in logins on campus vs. off campus, and most schools offer the exact same experience in either location.

Read more in-depth highlights from CDW-G, from Dell, and from Fortinet.

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