Vertical Industry Communications: Higher EducationVertical Industry Communications: Higher Education
Distinct roles in a world of freedom and choice
October 22, 2018
In this, the fifth in our series on vertical industry communications, we review communications technology requirements and applications in higher education.
For earlier articles in the series, see:
While educational services have many sectors such as K-12, vocational education, and industry/military education, this article focuses on higher education due to the diversity of requirements, the freedom of choice expected by college and university faculty and students, and the way role requirements align neatly into a few usage profiles.
Higher Education Highlights
Higher education is a very visible industry sector. Most young people aspire to this level of education. Adults who have attended a college or university are often quite loyal to that institution and remain involved as alumni, donors, and fans. Universities and colleges perform more than 45% of the non-industrial research in the U.S.
Higher education employs about 1.8 million people in the U.S., according to 2018 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data), which is about 1.3% of the total workforce. However, as suggested, this segment has a much larger influence.
Higher education is very role-based, and communications requirements track to those roles, as you'll see in this article.
Higher Education Value Chain Processes and Roles
Higher education has five major value chain components:
Instruction -- Provide multiple curricula for students leading to qualified degrees. These curricula are often organized into logical disciplines, usually known as a "school" (e.g., Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Business, etc.). This requires recruiting, supporting, and retaining qualified faculty and instructors. This usually includes operation of academic services such as libraries.
Research -- Conduct research, both within the disciplines as part of overall academic inquiry and in research programs funded by government or industry.
Administration -- Provide the organizational structure of student recruitment, enrollment, registration, and fees, as well as services such as housing, dining, recreation, and athletics. Alumni services and fundraising with endowment management are part of this category.
Facilities -- Operate, maintain, change, and expand the physical plant and provide related services similar to a local government. These include police, fire, parking, and so on.
Related Organizations -- In most cases, there are a number of related organizations. For example, a Medical school is often associated with a hospital for commercial health care services that also serves as a base for medical research. The hospital often operates a separate communications system (the next article in the series will explore health care communications). In many cases, the Athletic Department is essentially operated separately, with its own unique communications system requirements. This article will not explore these specialized operations.
In this review, it will become clear that faculty and students in today's college and university settings have a strong preference for communications on their mobile smartphones. Also, all of the higher ed settings we've seen have a very strong preference for email over voice communications, since email provides a log, is asynchronous, and works from anywhere.
Two other generic shifts are worth noting as part of the context:
First, the campus environment has shifted almost entirely to Wi-Fi and cellular as the backbone networks for personal voice and data communications. Wireless delivers service into almost all locations without major costs to replace the wired infrastructure, which is even more costly in older campuses with such problems as asbestos remediation when remodeling. Dorm room phones, once a revenue source, are a thing of the past.
Second, all campuses now place major attention on safety, requiring such tools as E-911 from desk, classroom, and conference room phones; special emergency (blue) phones in buildings, dorms, parking lots, etc.; and methods to locate wireless callers through Wi-Fi or cellular networks.
Now, let's look at the communications requirements of the first four value chain categories.
Instruction
Communications for instruction is organized, almost entirely, around a learning management system, or LMS. Modern LMS provides essentially everything the instructor and students need to complete the course of study. The LMS will include online capabilities for:
The ability to conduct classes online with audio, file sharing, and video
Content management for the course materials, including class session video recordings
Student capabilities for attendance (if remote), assignments, and work submission
Student team workspaces for collaborative work
Communication with the instructor at least by text and files, and often by voice or video
Grade posting
Integration to Administration's systems for student enrollment and completion grading
In all cases, the LMS is accessible via browser on wireless phones, tablets, and computers, and also is often available via a mobile application.
Thus, the instructional value chain element in higher education is an entirely self-contained world with essentially no requirements for general-purpose IP telephony or unified communications. This is essentially the production value chain element of higher ed, as represented by the Production Usage Profile.
The classroom experiences do require audio and video facilities that are functional but easy to use, since instructors and students in these spaces constantly rotate. For smaller classrooms and seminar rooms, general-purpose AV systems are sufficient (see the Foundational Services post). Large classrooms require custom-designed solutions. In either case, the AV system must connect easily to the LMS (see Foundational Usage Profile.)
Note that instructors may be tenured faculty, graduate students, or instructors. It's critical not to assume that all instructors are faculty, or vice versa.
Research
Research is conducted by faculty with their graduate student cadre and is supported by technical staff, as in lab settings, and by research assistance, such as needed for interviews and data collection in social sciences or business research.
Higher education research is similar to commercial enterprise R&D, and maps well to the Collaboration Usage Profile in functionality. However, higher ed research usually differs significantly from commercial R&D since the researchers often work in teams across locations and across institutions. Also, in many cases, the grant funding for the research restricts the researchers from paying their institution for services, such as collaboration software.
The observable result is that most cross-institution research teams will use free cloud-based services such as Google G Suite and Zoom conferencing. Of course, these applications are tuned to online services, accessible from PCs, Macs, tablets, and smartphones, entirely separate from the institution's communications infrastructure other than the IP networks.
This essentially removes the research function from unified communication planning and support by the college's or university's IT team. Some institutions will decide to make the collaboration applications available for free in their service catalogs, but that still may not provide access to those services for research team members from other institutions.
The researchers may wish to use the institution's conference rooms for group meetings, yet that will be only for connection of screens and sound to the cloud-based apps.
An exception to this description is when social science or business research requires a large number of voice or in-person interviews. In such cases, traditional multiline telephones, softphones, and outbound dialing may be of value.
Note that many researchers also participate in the Instruction value chain element.
Administration
Here is where the usual voice and unified communications services occur in higher education. Overall, due to the large and constantly changing number of applicants, students, and alumni, the administration processes are highly automated.
Specialized software packages provide for all types of processes, from recruiting, to admissions, registration, class enrollment, grade posting/academic record maintenance, housing service, food service, parking permits, transportation, police and fire, etc. Since all students are now assumed to have smartphones, most of the interactions are via online browser pages or apps provided by the software applications. Essentially, this is a blend of the Information Processing Usage Profile and Contact Center Usage Profile.
Thus, the ideal communications scenario for most administration processes is to have communications integrated with the applications. In this way, the exceptions can be easily managed right within the software package context. Most interactions will be via the app (e.g., approving a parking permit request), but may be via text messaging, email, or a call. Obviously, it will be best if that call is launched from the application and a record of that call is automatically generated. In some cases, such as calls to police and fire or calls from applicants or alumni, inbound contact center technology is appropriate, again with integration to the institution's databases and software applications.
Facilities
A college or university is essentially a small city that must constantly be maintained -- i.e., buildings, infrastructure such as power and HVAC, roadways, and specialized environments from hospitals to parking lots. Our experience is that this value chain element, which is similar to the service value chain element Harvard professor Michael Porter describes in his model (see the Manufacturing Outlook post), is a combination of the Collaboration Usage Profile and the Production Usage Profile.
Collaboration comes into play when facilities need to be modified or upgraded, either at the occupant's request or for safety or regulatory compliance. This is a collaborative process that makes reference to the "as built" documentation as the basis for a creative activity.
Production is the model for the actual maintenance or modifications. In all cases, this work is either larger scope work that is project based or is smaller scope work that follows a simple dispatch model. In many cases, this work is managed by software applications, such as IBM's Maximo Asset Management, accessed on tablet computers. Communications is usually through the entries in the software or through text messaging or email.
In some cases, our clients have been interested in voice communications links from the asset management software to facilitate calls for information or expert assistance. However, these calls can route as easily through a cellular service or a communications platform as a service (CPaaS) provider as through the institutions IP PBX infrastructure.
Summary
Higher education communications is one of the best examples of communications linked to the processes within the value chain elements. There is little need for communications across the functional elements, say between researchers and transportation or athletics. The communications can easily be seen simply as a large collection of applications, and this is being borne out as those specialized applications become more readily available and become more and more functional to meet the college's or university's needs.
We are unlikely to see the PBX infrastructure disappear from higher education institutions, but it is unlikely to be the focus of new investment. Rather, the communications functions will continue to grow as extensions of email, such as we see with Microsoft Office 365 or Google G Suite, and of purpose-built applications. Many higher ed communications system users and their departments may continue to pay the monthly or annual fees for telephone numbers, devices, and carrier services. However, some departments have realized they have all the communications services they need through the combination of their process-based applications, email services, and (free) cloud-based tools for calling and conferencing. This is an embryonic trend in this sector.
Communications solution vendors and system integrators as well as IT and communications system architects will be well served to focus on the trend toward application-based communications within the higher ed value chain processes. Of course, we wish them all great success, especially if that success improves both the quality and the accessibility of a superb education for all.
BCStrategies is an industry resource for enterprises, vendors, system integrators, and anyone interested in the growing business communications arena. A supplier of objective information on business communications, BCStrategies is supported by an alliance of leading communication industry advisors, analysts, and consultants who have worked in the various segments of the dynamic business communications market.
