“One of the things that we see and are anticipating is that more and more devices are being connected on campus,” Mickool said. “It’s no longer the traditional students bringing in their laptops.”
The university has worked with Extreme Networks, a California-based company that has worked with other Ohio schools, including Sinclair Community College.
“Wi-Fi is a big concern for higher education,” said spokesman Jason King. “All the students are bringing in five to six devices they want to connect to whether it’s their iPhone or Xbox.”
Mickool said the university found that on average students bring three devices to campus that they connect to Wi-Fi, which is a major increase from the past.
Wittenberg will have the capability to prioritize bandwidth based on the user, device, time, location and application. That will better ensure the professors showing videos in classroom won’t have to worry about the picture skipping or freezing, he said.
Wittenberg also is updating desktop computers, investing in virtual desktop technology and better equipping itself for video conferencing and the use of videos that are viewed by students in the classroom and out, Mickool said.
“Without the network infrastructure, you really can’t do things like video conferencing in a stable consistent way,” he said.
“It’s going to really enable things like the flipped classroom and technology’s use in active and engaged learning,” he said. “Wittenberg is really known of its active and engaged learning environment. Now these technologies are just another option.”
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