AVT Question: Please share your insights into emerging trends and how AV/IT technologies are reshaping the higher education classroom and beyond.
Thought Leader: Nicole Corbin, Vice President of Product at Utelogy
Educational institutions across the country are deploying more technology in more rooms across more dispersed campuses. Simultaneously, tech support teams and estate managers are challenged to manage these increasingly complex spaces with fewer resources, less staff, and minimal budgets—sometimes even relying on students to support installed technology.
These same students, and many faculty, are also digital natives who have only ever known technology at their fingertips. Their expectation is straightforward: Classroom tech must work when they need it.
Technical support teams need the flexibility to do their jobs from anywhere, at any time." —Nicole Corbin, Vice President of Product at Utelogy
This focus on the user experience has raised the stakes for AV/IT estate management. State-of-the-art classroom technology does more than provide a competitive edge for attracting students and faculty; it’s also a key contributor to maintaining sustainability efforts.
Technical support teams need the flexibility to do their jobs from anywhere, at any time. Remote monitoring and management software that may have once been a luxury is now a necessity, especially with shrinking budgets caused in large part by reductions in federal funding. Estate managers can remotely monitor and manage devices and systems across a network to perform remote troubleshooting or prevent issues before they escalate and disrupt classroom schedules. Alerts and self-healing system capabilities are also critical for ensuring educational technology is fully operational on demand. The ability to track device and room usage helps organizations make data-based operational and purchasing decisions.
Effective asset management is critical for ed tech managers. Support teams need to ensure uninterrupted service by tracking warranties, license expiration dates, security patches, firmware versions, and device refresh cycles, which are necessary for accurate and timely planning and budgeting as they evaluate their needs for the next year.
Solutions such as the Utelogy Platform provide support staff with software-based productivity tools combined with on-campus and remote management capabilities. The platform also offers asset management, monitoring, room automation, usage metrics and analytics, alerting, and reporting, plus the ability to adapt to legacy AV or new AV/UC technologies.
