Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Bandwidth demand straining college budgets

Twenty-seven percent of institutions said they capped the number of devices a student can connect to the campus network at five.

Half of college IT departments pay for broadband internet service in campus residential areas and don’t recover the costs, while six in 10 students said they would consider moving to off-campus housing if web speeds lagged.

New statistics showing how spiking broadband demand has impacted campus IT departments were included in an infographic created by OnlineColleges.net, a site that tracks technology use in education.

Half of campuses included in a survey said the money spent on satiating students’ broadband needs for their laptops, smart phones, tablet computers, and video game consoles is never recovered through tuition or student fees.…Read More

March Madness online streaming taxes campus networks

UD Mercy saw a 30-percent increase in bandwidth usage this week.

If Marquette University students weren’t on spring break this week, the school’s IT officials would have faced an internet bandwidth nightmare.

The Marquette Golden Eagles were building a lead in the second half of their first round NCAA Tournament game March 15 against the underdog Brigham Young University (BYU) Cougars when Mary Simmons, Marquette’s director of security and networks, saw that the campus’s bandwidth was “pretty much pegged,” or maxed out, even on the slowest week of the spring semester.

Whoever was left on campus, Simmons said, was streaming the game online, and IT staffers could track the sky-high use of network bandwidth.…Read More