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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.

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

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The March Madness bracket feared by every campus IT official

UCLA still has the worst campus data breach ever recorded.

March Madness has yet to tip off, and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) has already won a championship. This run through the NCAA Tournament brackets, however, won’t end with campus celebrations, especially in VCU’s IT department.

VCU, a 32,000-student campus in Richmond, Va., that came up one game short of the 2011 NCAA Tournament championship game in its improbable path to the Final Four last spring took home a less glamorous prize March 12, when the university was named the winner of the 2012 Higher Education Data Breach Madness tournament.

Application Security, a database security company based in New York, released a bracket filled with colleges and universities that reported the worst database breaches from the previous year. All 48 higher-education data incidents were mentioned in the bracket, and 16 schools were given bye-rounds.…Read More

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Duncan: Ban NCAA teams with low grad rates

Duncan drew attention to low college graduation rates as March Madness began March 18.
Duncan drew attention to low college graduation rates as March Madness began March 18.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says college basketball teams that don’t graduate at least 40 percent of their players should be banned from postseason play.

Duncan said in remarks delivered in a conference call March 17 that his idea represents a low bar, and over time it should be raised.

NCAA spokesman Bob Williams says a ban based on graduation rates unfairly penalizes current players for the academic performance of athletes from years ago. He says the NCAA already has a system in place that penalizes schools if they do not meet academic benchmarks.…Read More