Using the cloud to deliver reliable IT services

With a host of new technologies, thousands of lectures and lessons uploaded to iTunes University, and a newly refurbished library that caters to the needs of today’s college students, Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif., is our eCampus of the Month for January.

The private, Christian liberal arts college with 1,300 undergraduate students has implemented predictive modeling and cloud-computing programs to save money and spend budgets efficiently, becoming a model for small schools looking for ways to survive the slumping economy.

Here, Reed Sheard, vice president of advancement and information technology, describes the school’s programs and its keys to success.

(Editor’s note: To nominate your college or university for our “eCampus of the Month” feature, and to read about past winners, go to: http://ecampusnews.eschoolmedia.com/ecampus-of-the-month/.)

How do you use technology to advance student learning?

A few of the technologies our students use are Meraki wireless (close to 100-percent 802.11n coverage over our 111-acre campus), Moodle LMS, and Google Apps.

Our classrooms are equipped with Sanyo projectors, and we have dual-boot (Mac and Windows) iMac labs around campus, including in the newly refurbished library, where there is a 27-station open lab and a 25-station instructional lab, three new MediaScape labs from Steelcase for computer-to-computer collaboration, and Walkstations from Steelcase with built-in desks for the kinesthetic learner.

We developed an iPhone app in-house that includes a searchable campus directory, calendars, a dining menu, a GPS-enabled shuttle map, live streaming of athletic events, and host of RSS feeds, among other goodies.

There is dedicated internet bandwidth in the residence halls, along with numerous dedicated technologies appropriate to specific departments, such as Finale music composing and notation software, HyperResearch Adobe Creative Suite, and many others.

We have extensively leveraged Apple’s iTunes U and have uploaded more than 3,000 audio and video files for student access over the past 18 months. Lastly, we have our college publication, The Westmont Magazine, available as a native iPad application.