Generative artificial intelligence tools are starting to change the world. AI text generators such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini make it easier to complete mundane tasks, and AI image generators such as StarryAI can take an ordinary picture and make it extraordinary. Even Grammarly and Microsoft are getting on board with their own AI text enhancers. What does this mean for education? Do these generative AI tools help or hinder learning? The answer: No one knows yet; probably a little of both. Regardless, AI is not going away  ..read more

In 2024, Wi-Fi celebrates its 25th birthday with a big announcement: the introduction of Wi-Fi 7. This new generation of Wi-Fi builds upon the existing features of Wi-Fi 6E but includes new components that improve efficiency and the user experience. What Wi-Fi 7 Brings to Higher Education Hybrid and online courses, robotics and virtual reality, and the sheer volume of users on a college campus all make reliable Wi-Fi critical. “The more online resources students need to access — whether it’s submitting homework to the learning management system or livestreaming a lectu ..read more

Students today bring a lot with them when they attend college, including multiple devices. They also bring elevated expectations for the digital experience, both on campus and off. If they hope to deliver the experience demanded by their staff and students, colleges and universities must constantly revisit their IT investments. A regular assessment of the tech landscape will help to determine where new devices are needed, how to manage existing devices, and when it’s best to move on from equipment that’s no longer useful or viable. For many institutions, the management of all of these&nbs ..read more

Lois Brooks has served in senior leadership positions at the University of Wisconsin–Madison since 2018, after eight years as CIO at Oregon State and 25 years at Stanford. In her role at UW–Madison, she supports UW IT Connects, an effort to build community and provide professional growth opportunities across the university’s distributed IT staff. EDTECH: What is the history of UW IT Connects? BROOKS: IT Connects was formed about a decade ago, and it was entirely a grassroots effort. Former colleagues who had been to leadership training, Brandon Bernier, Deborah Helman and Brenda Spychalla ..read more

When colleges and universities were first forced to go virtual in 2020, there was a scramble to get everyone online. And while those early virtual meeting rooms performed adequately under the circumstances, they were hardly operating as robust learning platforms. However, they were ideal for figuring out what worked and what needed improvement to support better learning environments and more efficient student engagement. The designers of Adobe Connect took advantage of that feedback, creating a fully customizable platform that educators can use to configure virtual classrooms perfectly suited ..read more

While most faculty agree that ed tech enhances the teaching and learning experience, many question whether higher education administrators are choosing the right products. In WGU Labs’ College Innovation Network survey of nearly 500 faculty members at post-secondary institutions, 30 percent of respondents said they do not trust their institution to choose effective products, and 27 percent do not trust ed tech vendors to provide effective products. To establish trust, administrators need to include faculty members in decision-making and provide more robust support during implementation and ..read more

Colleges and universities should harness the full benefits of their data centers to bolster student, faculty and staff services using transformative solutions. For that to happen, CIOs and CTOs must analyze, integrate and optimize their current and planned use of data virtualization solutions.   By virtualization, I mean solutions that empower IT data centers to run multiple independent computing sessions simultaneously on a single physical computer. By enabling one system to support or host multiple guest virtual machines, institutions are essentially sharing hardware resources. Colleges ..read more

Managing the end of the device lifecycle for things like phones, tablets, laptops and desktops can turn what might seem like a basic IT task into a circus of political and financial conversations at higher education institutions. To bring some objectivity to the process, consider these five questions: 1. Has the Device Use Case Changed? Before simply replacing an older device with an updated model, ask end users if their use cases have changed. A shift from desktop to mobile, or vice versa, may be in the works. Laptops, desktops and tablets can be upsized or downsized, depending on u ..read more

There’s a common misconception about zero trust. It presumes that higher education institutions must make costly financial investments in newfangled security products in order to protect themselves from the scourge of cybercrime. Very little of that is true. The zero-trust philosophy — put simply as the implementation of a security architecture that automatically denies access to everyone before analyzing permissions to determine which people and/or devices can access which areas of a technology IT ecosystem — is not a product one can buy. There is no shiny new tool that will, on its own, set ..read more

The federal government responded to the changing higher education landscape in the early part of this decade by making significant grant funds available to colleges and universities to promote student safety and help institutions offer remote and hybrid instruction. Those funds, most notably the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, expired last year, and while the cutoff was expected, the gap in funding may have left some administrators searching for additional dollars to transform university technology. One area where higher education institutions can still tap into government funding and ..read more