The Role of IT in Virtual Learning

By Monique Lucey

An increasing number of higher education institutions are noticing the appeal of virtual learning environments (VLE), where students have flexible access to classes, coursework, faculty and supplementary materials. However, they might not be as aware of the toll these projects can take on IT infrastructure and resources.

Students, teachers and staff expect anytime, anywhere access to VLEs, including from potentially unsecured home and mobile networks. They require the platform and infrastructure to feature high performance and high availability at all times. And they take for granted that the information downloaded, posted, exchanged and stored will be protected.

At the same time, the parameters of what constitutes a VLE are constantly changing. Some VLEs have HD components, such as videoconferencing, that can be incredibly draining to network resources if not monitored closely. Others use social networking to share information, which must be managed to comply with government privacy mandates.

To ensure that all bases are covered with VLEs and that users are getting the highest quality of access to learning, higher education institutions should bring IT to the table early on in their VLE deployment discussions. That way, VLE stakeholders can have a proactive discussion about the capacity, compliance, management, security and storage needs that comprise a sound VLE strategy.

As an example, to guarantee that VLE users can’t get into unauthorized areas of the system, IT can work with VLE administrators to establish user and group access policies. They can map those policies to government and university guidelines. Centralized management tools enable IT to automatically dispatch, deploy, update and enforce these policies to all endpoints. In addition, with centralized management tools, IT can run reports and handle audits to prove compliance.

IT also successfully impacts the resiliency of the VLE environment by studying spikes in usage through centralized network management and optimizing network resources accordingly. If a professor posts a new HD video lecture, IT can make sure that the server and network bandwidth are capable of handling increased user access without negatively affecting the rest of the network.

Finally, IT will be the key to benchmarking VLE success. Using centralized network management, IT can chart how often users are accessing the VLE and what components they are finding most effective. They can also alert stakeholders to growing pains and expand infrastructure before performance takes a hit and users complain.

Click here for more information about how the H3C Intelligent Management Center (IMC) network management platform can play a positive role in virtual learning.

How have you handled the relationship between VLEs and IT? Did your institution bring you into the discussion early on or did you have to play catch-up once the platform was deployed? What advice do you have for others that are deploying VLEs to meet security and infrastructure demands? Let us know below.

A Lesson in Higher Education Network Management

By Monique Lucey

As a follow up to my last blog regarding the implications of H1N1 to higher education networks, I had the opportunity to sit down with Les Stuart, H3C Intelligent Management Center (IMC) product line manager. We discussed the additional cost-containment and system control benefits of centrally managing and securing academic networks which extend beyond the current pandemic.

ML: What are the main challenges that higher education CxOs and their IT teams will face in the coming year?

LS: The biggest challenge—and it’s an ongoing one—is how to do more with less. While there will be exponentially more projects and users for IT to support, staffing and budgets will not increase to accommodate these demands. They’ll also have to deal with the proliferation of nontraditional devices and applications such as BlackBerrys and social networking, as well as increased government mandates to protect student access and data.

ML: Why will these pose such a problem?

LS: In some environments, if IT administrators see access, devices or applications as a threat, they can simply institute bans. But in higher education, cutting off access—even if the system is a possible threat—is a not an option because it may be partially government funded. Therefore, IT groups must figure out a way to manage the networks in a way that keeps them safe and compliant yet open.

ML: What are some specific network management challenges in higher education?

LS: Basic infrastructure and integration management is hard enough, but today privacy and security requirements necessitate increased network management. Over the past five years, the adoption of best-of-breed solutions by individual departments has also added to the complexity of network management. In addition, end users are demanding access to more bandwidth-intensive applications, such as high-definition gaming and streaming video, and that results in a further drain on IT resources. Add to that the proliferation of security, privacy and compliance requirements, and we now have extremely complex networks that have eclipsed the capabilities of most legacy network management tools.

ML: So what have IT teams done to address this?

LS: They’ve tended to treat their role as an ISP and only handle the core infrastructure, leaving individual departments to deal with their own environments. But that propagates an ad-hoc environment that is incredibly difficult to manage end-to-end. Other IT teams don’t have the in-depth, in-house knowledge to manage some of these more management-intensive technologies such as voice over IP (VoIP). And there are so many applications fighting for bandwidth or priority within users’ networks that if handled incorrectly, things start to break down.

ML: What are the benefits that centralized network management can enable?

LS: There are so many, but mainly bringing everything under one umbrella gives an amazing amount of control and helps IT staff deliver quality of service for all local and remote voice, video and data applications. Appropriate thresholds can be set to alert IT teams to network problems before users are impacted. And comprehensive metrics can be used for modeling and capacity planning. All these things help save time and money and enable tackling new projects in a strategic manner. From a single console the IMC tool manages wired and wireless voice, video and data networks as a unified set of resources. Other tools either require a separate infrastructure or a separate management package. IT teams have to shuffle between products or take time to learn how to use a complicated piece of software, draining productivity and efficiency metrics. IMC software features web-based service components that allow managing a range of heterogeneous network elements, including network access control, voice over IP traffic analysis, service-level agreements, and MPLS and VPN provisioning. Many customers, in fact, have told me that they can use more than 80% of the features without needing a manual. This ease of use speeds implementation and lowers personnel overhead.

ML: How has IMC software improved higher education IT environments?

LS: In an educational environment with tens of thousands of students accessing the network throughout the year and new applications emerging every day, it’s hard to rely on static policies. The IMC platform enables real-time monitoring of users, devices and network resources. For instance, if heavy peer-to-peer traffic is impacting the functioning of the admissions application, policies can be set, distributed and enforced to mitigate the issue.

How is your IT team addressing network management? Do you handle the core only and leave departments to address their own environments? Do you have complete end-to-end visibility of your network? We want to hear from you.