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Five steps for creating a mobile-ready campus to increase student successHow to develop a workable plan to embrace mobile IT and meet today’s – and tomorrow’s – learning needs

White Paper

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Five steps for creating a mobile-ready campus

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Today, educators at all levels – from primary to community colleges and universities – are facing the need to facilitate new learning outcomes made possible by aggressive IT modernization. But they are also constrained by budgets and small IT staffs, making flexibility, scalability and affordability top priorities.Creating a mobile-ready campus supports innovative curricula and learning tools, but it’s also good for business. Alongside demonstrated learning benefits, mobile-campus practices also demonstrate relevance and quality to prospective students and parents. It isn’t just the dean who can champion this modernization; enrollment and the business office also have a stake.

This white paper will outline some of the benefits of a mobile-ready campus and introduce the key steps in moving toward one. With the right technology partner, schools of any size can formulate a workable plan and take their curricula to the next level, enriching the learning experience for today’s mobile-native students and allowing schools to take future IT evolutions in stride.

The five critical steps that lead to a mobile-campus strategy

Although schools differ in type and mission, many of their curricular considerations and IT needs are the same. Use the steps below as mileposts as you consider moving toward a mobile-ready campus.

1. Understand best practices: Any mobile strategy should be preceded by market research to see what other similar institutions are doing well. Fortunately, education tends to be a collaborative field, so many institutions that have adopted a mobile-campus model have also shared their experience. Three universities in Florida, for

example – the University of South Florida, the University of Florida and the University of Central Florida – even conducted their planning processes together. As a result, they are empowering their educational communities with the latest in mobile tools and reaping unforeseen learning benefits.

Read the full story of these three Florida universities.

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1. Understand best practices

2. Analyze your institution’s needs

3. Design your mobile-ready campus strategy

4. Evaluate technology and solutions

5. Implement a successful, long-term strategy

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Here are some common practices that can help bring your mobile-campus strategy to life:

• By orienting a mobile strategy around innovative and engaging learning and research models – mobile workspaces, makerspaces and virtual labs, for example – researchers and students are empowered to do their best work. Additionally, administrators and decision-makers have immediate, learning-based justification for supporting IT change.

• Provisioning apps and related IT resources to mobile devices facilitates new types of online and remote coursework, which gives students and teachers flexibility and can open entirely new distance-learning markets. It also enhances learning continuity in the case of school cancellations, athletic trips, etc., which engages students in what used to be lost work time, keeps courses on track and improves student performance.

• Other collaborative experiences, such as virtual field trips and mobile IT help desks, provide new services, enrich the educational experience and allow students to learn experientially.

2. Analyze your institution’s needsA rural middle school might have different needs than an urban research university, and any mobile strategy should consider variables that include technical needs, curricula, users and audience and financial constraints.

While a technology partner should initiate these conversations, it’s helpful to think ahead about questions you will encounter along the way, including:

Technical needsTechnical considerations cover a wide gamut. Do your researchers require the use of resource-heavy ArcGIS software on tablets? How important is mitigating disruptions from

missed school, weather cancellations or even potential natural disasters? What are your security and compliance needs? How large – or small – is your IT team? How reliant is your organization on the cloud – and how reliant should it be?

Additionally, how is infrastructure set up today? To a surprising degree, Wi-Fi capabilities, the number of power outlets, etc., can impact adoption and success of mobile strategies. New construction should take these basic needs into consideration – and plan for scaling up in the future.

Curricula How progressive is your institution when it comes to adopting flipped classrooms, remote learning and other innovative models that are well-served by mobile functionality? Are you a research-oriented institution with many resource-intensive applications to run and stream, or a public middle school where affordable and equitable access for all students is most important?

Users and audienceThink about how diverse your mobile users might be. Aside from students and administrators, campus visitors such as prospective students are likely to find value in a mobile-enabled campus – and they might even judge a school’s quality by the success of its mobile strategy. Even alumni and donors can interface with these systems, especially since many alumni offices are rolling out tools like map-based alumni directories and app-based campus tours. And in an era of interdisciplinary research, cross-departmental collaboration among faculty and researchers can be made easier.

1 University Business/Citrix survey, December 2015.

95% of higher education leaders agree that students should have access to applications and data anywhere, on any device.

45% said their institution does not provide this level of access to students.1

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This diversity means that, among other things, it is wise to balance open, active spaces with private, quieter ones for solo studying – accommodating different types of learners and visitors – and prioritizing app development and rollout based on its cross-audience utility. Generational and socioeconomic differences, too, can impact both a user’s readiness and needs.

Financial responsibilitiesWhat is the scope of your mobile transformation? Does it apply to a small, single-campus institution or a large, distributed one? How are IT resources allocated? What collaborations and collective understandings are necessary to make the investment?

3. Designing your mobile-ready campus strategy: focus on benefitsYour institution’s mobile strategy should maximize the benefits that are most important for your situation and broader institutional priorities. For example, some schools will prioritize BYOD and school-owned distributed devices to ensure equity of access among students; others will rely on mobile infrastructure primarily to support resource-heavy applications that can overwhelm traditional computer labs. Some will also use mobile applications to engage adult or nontraditional learners and open up new revenue streams.

Here are some of the more impactful benefits and ROI metrics that can form the basis of a mobile-campus strategy:

• Diverse audiences, from prospective students to alumni, can use mobile connectivity to engage with the institution more richly. Prospective families on campus visits can translate well-provisioned mobile services into positive impressions of the school as a whole – increasing their likelihood of enrollment.

• Substantial short- and long-term cost savings can come from IT modernization – removing future hardware procurement needs, streamlining app adoption and upgrading and even saving on power costs. And larger institutions can actually save on real estate expenditures. By eliminating the need for so many static labs, spaces on the existing campus footprint can be repurposed, negating the need for new construction or land acquisition.

• Mobile technologies are made to evolve and can accommodate upgrades seamlessly, scaling up to meet future needs in minutes rather than months. Providing IT with this level of agility frees IT administrators to take on more impactful strategic roles at the institution. It also empowers school leaders to seek innovative solutions rather than spending time and resources shoring up obsolescent ones.

• Perhaps above all, a mobile strategy facilitates excellent learning outcomes, benefiting students and enabling educators to meet the goals for which they are held accountable.

By now, many schools have begun adopting this technology – and reaping the rewards. The University of South Florida, for example, realized a cost savings of $600,000 per year on real estate alone. Shelton Public Schools in Western Connecticut is currently saving an estimated $10 million in hardware costs over 10 years. And when Roger Williams University deliberately chose their most difficult stakeholders – users at the architecture school – for their initial rollout test group, they showed other campus stakeholders a powerful initial success, paving the way for eager adoption elsewhere on campus.

Read more about Shelton School District’s mobile transition

Read the Roger Williams University case study

$600,000 in cost savings realized per year on real estate alone by the University of South Florida.

$10 millionin hardware savings over 10 years by the Shelton Public Schools in Western Connecticut.

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These examples highlight the breadth of institutions that benefit from mobile strategies – and often the relative ease of adopting them.

4. Evaluate technology and solutionsIdentify the core elements of your new IT infrastructure and prioritize the functionality your users will need to meet your strategic goals.

As a baseline, these technical elements will likely include:

√ Microsoft® Windows® desktop and application virtualization to ensure BYOD interoperability and create uninterrupted workflows

√ Distributable mobile devices, such as tablets or small workbooks, to provide equitable access to educational tools

√ Data syncing and file sharing to allow collaboration and research

√ Secure networking infrastructure and management to provide administrators with control

5. Implement a long-term strategyOnce you have identified your technology priorities, you can assemble them into a cohesive IT package. Remember that adoption is not a one-time event, however. These mobile IT solutions invite evolution, scaling and ongoing improvement, depending on your institution’s changing needs. They also can require large-scale adoption and adjustment from current users.

Typical steps in creating a widely sustainable, agile solution include:

Start with the “why”Understand the impacts of a mobile strategy on learning outcomes, and how IT modernization facilitates the educational gains for which you are responsible. Articulate to campus stakeholders why the change is desirable, and turn this into an easily communicated vision.

Find campus championsAdoption is best ensured when students, faculty and administrators become advocates. Peers listen to peers, so consider who in your community might serve as evangelists for this new technology.

Communicate and educateAn IT change of this magnitude will require education; frustration can lead to user fatigue and resistance to adoption. But by framing your outreach in terms of the educational benefits realized and the institutional ROI created, users can see why they are moving to a new, more helpful paradigm.

The University of Connecticut, for example, collaborated with Citrix® on an extensive internal marketing campaign to increase awareness and create legions of campus advocates. This eased their mobile transition and ensured widespread adoption among key stakeholders.

Read more in the University of Connecticut case study

Evaluate, evolve, repeatGiven their evolutionary nature, these mobile strategies requires periodic evaluations of effectiveness. Thinking long-term now will allow for the growth or constriction of your audiences, adaptation to enhanced learning models and the accommodation of new hardware types.

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About CitrixCitrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) is a leader in mobile workspaces, providing virtualization, mobility management, networking and cloud services to enable new ways to work better. Citrix solutions power business mobility through secure, personal workspaces that provide people with instant access to apps, desktops, data and communications on any device, over any network and cloud. This year Citrix is celebrating 25 years of innovation, making IT simpler and people more productive. With annual revenue in 2013 of $2.9 billion, Citrix solutions are in use at more than 330,000 organizations and by over 100 million users globally. Learn more at www.citrix.com.

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Conclusion: A focus on learning value Curricular models aren’t what they used to be. They’re better. Educators understand that today’s students use remarkable tools and techniques for mastering key learning subjects. Today’s typical student arrives on campus with two to three mobile devices and raises an eyebrow at the prospect of being confined to a stuffy brick-and-mortar computer lab – so now is the time for schools to modernize, differentiate themselves as innovation hubs and provide their students and staff with the tools they need to succeed.

Today, IT is the fulcrum of that change.

For more information about Citrix solutions for education, please visit citrix.com/education.