Schools Juggle Logistics, Costs Of Ever-Changing Technology
Photo/Matt Pilon
Don Vescio, vice president of information technologies at Worcester State University.
The fast-evolving technology of smartphones and tablet computers poses a challenge for area colleges whose students increasingly expect institutions to provide interactive online elements that have become ubiquitous in their lives.
Administrators at the schools say they aren’t simply hopping on the latest trend for the sake of it. They want to provide tools that promote learning in their classrooms and outside of them. And there are cost considerations, too. Developing web applications and tools is expensive. And so is data storage, which is in demand because students are sending photos and videos from their smartphones from their student email accounts.
With those goals in mind, an increasing number of colleges find themselves partnering with big companies who can provide such services, often free of charge.
“The role of IT is really changing rapidly,” said Don Vescio, vice president of information technologies at Worcester State University. “We’re trying to be smart partners with industry leaders.”
Those industry leaders include big names like Google, Apple and Microsoft.
Apple Partnership
Worcester State is going live next month with iTunes University, an online service from Apple that will allow faculty to create and host class-related multimedia content for students that will be branded as WSU content. It’s a step up from YouTube, Vescio said, and it’s still free.
“iTunes U allows us to help students and faculty create highly polished products,” he said. “I could see this being a heavy presence in many classes.”
Worcester State, like many of its fellow schools in the area, has other corporate partners. The school signed up with Google’s Gmail service four years ago to host student accounts.
Other schools are following suit and switching to Gmail or Microsoft-based services.
The College of the Holy Cross is making the switch this fall, said Ellen Keohane, director of information technology services at the school.
The benefits? It’s free. Students will get a massive 25 gigabytes of storage space and an array of Google applications. And they will be able to keep their accounts past graduation.
“It’s 100 times more storage space,” Keohane said. “We can’t keep up with Google.”
But what’s in it for Google?
That question has been a concern for Kevin Brassard, vice president for information services at Nichols College in Dudley, who has looked into hosting student accounts through Google and other companies.
“They do tell a compelling story, but there are a lot of challenges in going to that model,” Brassard said.
Security Concerns
Brassard said that colleges are legally obligated to protect student privacy, which he said includes their emails. Those obligations have created some uneasiness about outsourcing email services, and Brassard said that Nichols has opted to keep email in-house for now.
Keohane, of Holy Cross, said that administrators there did discuss potential implications of allowing a corporate entity to host its student email system.
“We discussed it, we reviewed the contracts and we did get comfortable that there were no privacy or security concerns,” she said.
Student email is one thing, but administrators have been reluctant to move faculty email accounts onto corporate servers.
Keohane said that there is a strong will among colleges to protect institutional data such as faculty research.
Despite challenges presented by the shifting technology landscape, schools must try to keep up, said Dawn Thistle, executive director for information technology and media services at Assumption College in Worcester.
“If we can make it easier for students to access what they need in order to become educated, then we should be doing that,” Thistle said.
“All of those services are now available online and it would be odd if we didn’t participate in that.”
Assumption is already on iTunes U and has plans this year to roll out Mox, a smartphone-optimized version of its portal website for students, which will make it easier to check grades, course schedules and other information from phones and tablets.
In an interesting twist, Thistle said that faculty in the college’s Worcester Institute for Senior Education have been the most prolific users of iTunes U at the college, showing that trendy technologies aren’t only for the young.
CORRECTION: The original version of this article incorrectly reported the name of the Apple product being used. It is iTunes U.
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