Colleges and universities across the country are discovering the benefits of a smart campus environment. A smart campus is a college or university environment that uses connected systems, technologies and devices to boost user experience, create operational efficiencies and improve teaching and learning. Institutions that create a smart campus can change the way students interact with one another and with their institution. A digitally connected campus can also improve safety and enhance the quality of life on college grounds.
What’s more, digitally native students now expect sophisticated technologies and smart, technology-enabled capabilities in just about every area of their post-secondary campus life. Schools with smart campuses are competitively superior to those lagging behind in digital technology adoption. Institutions must keep pace in order to remain relevant, attract new students while serving the needs of existing students and empowering faculty, administrators and researchers.
According to Deloitte, , the focal point for smart campus design is enhancing constituents’ quality of life. Says Deloitte, the key element common in in all design is the interconnectivity and the benefits it provides. It focuses on
Deloitte focuses on four key principles that foster a connected and consumer-grade experience for anyone who interacts with the institution in its smart campus design. The smart campus solutions must be:
1. Intuitive and easy to use. Students, professors, staff, alumni and other constituents are looking to interact with a system that doesn’t take much effort to use. The underlying platform should deliver an amazing and intuitive user experience, says Deloitte.
2. Designed around different personas. Users should be able to interact with the platform via multiple interfaces, including video, voice, gesture and touch. Consider various personas, user journeys and experiences when designing smart campus capabilities.
3. Modular, adaptive, flexible and intelligent. Campus needs are continually changing and technology that supports campuses will evolve to meet these changing needs. Deloitte recommends that a smart campus solution should use a domain-driven design architecture based on microservices to guide campus transformation. This approach lends flexibility to ever-changing services which enables a smart campus to evolve over time and allows some capabilities to be reused.
4. Adoptable and scalable. Ideally, the smart campus solution can foster collaboration between colleges and universities and their peers. Most institutions are local in their reach, but a smart campus solution that allows for global scalability can help the institution meet larger and broader goals. The solution can leverage digital tools and technologies to enable seamless data-driven experiences, supporting students who are in a physical classroom on campus or learning online from anywhere in the world.
Fierce Education along with Fierce Technology are producing “The Connected Campus” on August 31, an online-only event for higher education executives, leaders, faculty and IT decision makers. Register here now.
For more on Smart Campuses see:
Universities Poised to Realize the Benefits of Smart Technologies: Part 1