Voted for by the FOTE community, this year’s panel will be discussing challenges associated with ‘Bring Your Own Device – BYOD’.
Just as colleges and universities do no provide students with paper, pens and stationery
items but expect them to be used, the time is coming when mobile devices will be another
expected part of a student’s toolkit.Doug Belshaw – Mobile Learning infoKit / JISC infoNet
In February Forbes ran an article thanking Apple for the BYOD trend, in which Victoria Barret makes the point that the rise of “smart” devices, the blending of personal and professional tasks we perform on them and ease of use are liking it to a ‘bring your own bottle’ dinner:
“Your IT department will supply the meat and potatoes (think chunky, salty ERP systems), but if you want to have a really good time, you’re left to your own devices.”
Victoria Barret, Forbes Staff
A ComputerWorld article outlines Unisys’ beta-testing a BYOD policy and warns of remote wipes & legal holds, while BusinessInsider claims that the ‘smartphone invasion is changing the way we work’. Access to apps, management practice and mobile device management are identified as core issues in both and are the particular focus the Information Age article entitled ‘BYOD Requires Mobile Device Management’.
Surely the same concerns apply to students bringing their own devices? Can BYOD be extended to include staff of universities and colleges and which challenges would arise? These are some of the questions our panel of experts will help to address.
- Peter Tinson, Executive Secretary – UCISA (Chair)
- Arthur Spirling, Director of ICT – Imperial College
- Mandy Phillips, Head of BIS – Liverpool John Moores University
- Nizam Uddin, International Programmes Liaison Manager – ULU
- Rob Churm, Director of Information Services – St Georges University of London
A question: If all students are expected to bring in their own mobile device(s) are universities preparing to install more power sockets for recharging or will we see a growth of chargebox like stations (http://www.chargebox.com/) where students will be charged to recharge?
I think that kind of thing has to happen, yes. How many times have you been to a meeting or conference and thought, “where the hell are all the power sockets? What year was this place built FFS!?”.
Same goes for stable WiFi too!
Which reminds me, I better get a truck load of extension leads for FOTE11…
I would have thought a well-thought out IT strategy that incorporates a BYOD agenda will definitely have to increase the number of charge points. They will also ideally be placed in convenient locations where students are likely to spend significant amounts of time, so not by the Humanities corridor on the third floor for example which has no seating and is scarily empty after 6pm.
A question for all:
Should Universities be focussing on facilitating the usage of mobile devices when local IT infrastructure is poor and hasn’t been recently updated? What should the priorities be? I am inclined to think investment HAS to be in local infrastructure to ensure a minimum level of technology before BYOD is thoroughly considered.
Thoughts?
Of course by the time we put in all those power sockets the learners will all have devices with a battery life similar to the iPad, ie between eight and ten hours.
So they won’t need power sockets.
We need to think more innovatively than just looking at current requirements. What will our learners need in five years?
James
Don’t get me wrong I’m not against the principal of BYOD but it does raise some important questions around IT security that would need addressing for me….
I mean, without managing the devices, how would IT demonstrate to their ISP (Janet in our case) that the Institute is actively adhering to their T’s & C’s? How do you trace illegal activity such as copyright infringement etc if you have no idea who’s using your network? Even if you decide to segment your network, how do you avoid it becoming a nesting ground for spyware, malware and virus’s etc that then renders the service unusable?
I can see how tech could help here with options such as desktop virtualisation. Whilst this could make BYOD a reality for staff you wouldn’t want to manage and deploy VDIs out to 1000s of students too, it just wouldn’t be cost effective!
I’ve not doubt this is coming in one way shape or form but it appears the finer details are yet to be addressed…..
What do the BYODers need out of your (and JANET’s) network? They can bring their own 3G dongle, or you can use a commercial wireless provider.
We allow students to use their own devices on our wireless network but they have to authenticate using their AD account, so we do know who they are. They are segregated from the network using VLANs and firewall routing so they can only see public facing services which they could access from outside the network anyway.
We allow learners to bring in their own devices and they have their own wireless network to connect to (which is connected to JANET). However we use (what I call) a Starbucks model in that in order to access resources they need to authenticate using their college credentials. They also need to have up to date virus and firewall in place.
As a result they can only connect to the guest network if their machine is secure and we know who is connected and could if asked by JANET who did what through the use of our firewall.
We don’t manage the devices and we have asked all students to adhere to the JANET AUP.
http://www.ja.net/documents/publications/policy/aup.pdf
As a result in terms of
“It is the responsibility of the User Organisation to take reasonable steps to ensure its Members’ compliance with the conditions set out in this Policy document, and to ensure that unacceptable use of JANET is dealt with promptly and effectively should it occur.”
We have taken reasonable steps and we have procedures in place to deal with unacceptable use should it occur.
The key here is that you don’t need to prevent it occurring, you need to ensure that your users are aware of what they can and can not do, and that you have procedures in place to deal with incidents IF they occur.
I know some IT departments believe that they need to put in software/filters/device management to stop incidents happening, but this is NOT a requirement of the JANET AUP, as indicated here:
It is preferable for misuse to be prevented by a combination of responsible attitudes to the use of JANET resources on the part of its users and appropriate disciplinary measures taken by their User Organisations.
James Clay
You can solve all these issues on JANET. Segment the network with VLANs and SSIDs for different user groups. Use technologies from MAC lockdown to 802.1x to identify users. Port protection and DHCP snooping stop one networked system directly talking to (and infecting) other clients. It works.
JANET’s changed – see their new policy on Business & Community Engagement, which sweeps away many of the old connection policies. But as a community either we haven’t realised yet, or we are using JANET as convenient cover to hide behind as we don’t want to change.
Following on from James Clay’s question “We need to think more innovatively than just looking at current requirements. What will our learners need in five years?”
In five years will the college be providing devices or an internet connection? Will there be any IT supplied to students by the college at all?
4G roll out in the UK is going to be very slow, and even then it won’t beat Wifi. So yes, in 5 years colleges and unis will definitely be providing an Internet connection. You could argue it’s the most important thing for the IT department to provide to students.
Lots of questions – but I think it is happening anyway, already..
yes, more power points, better wi-fi, etc – and no doubt security concerns from IT depts:
But the most recent posts capture it for me: the future of this is hard to tell…
With fees rising, what exactly will student-customers expect? I feel that as the technology becomes more transparent/pervasive – the student want the experience served to them via the medium they choose.
This may mean more apps, or whatever they become, that deliver the content and a focus not on kit, but on a really pedagogically efficacious, slick and holistic presentation of course content…
At the other end of the spectrum (I work predominantly with the primary phase), in a few pioneering schools we’re starting to see the early stages of a move away from locked-down AD-based networks and towards ubiquitous WiFi providing access to cloud-based resources. In my own school, for instance, the students grab a device from the pool, and it might be running iOS, Win, Linux or ChromeOS – on the netbooks we run, they might not even know what they’re going to get until it boots. We’ve got a few fixed machines for specialist software applications. The point here is that we’re trying to make the students device- and OS-agnostic so that, as Dave points out above, the focus is on the content and the pedagogy, rather than the kit. It’s not for everybody, perhaps, but it works for us.
Mark,
Snap – I too am phasing out our locked down AD based system and shifting to learner own identity.
Ultimately we could operate like an Internet Cafe – no need to log in to the machine and ultimately .. just bring your own
I wonder whether it isn’t worth institutions being identity providers. I realise it’ll be difficult to break the Facebook stranglehold.
I wonder if anyone is delegating Shibboleth sign-in to Facebook…?
This is somethign I thought about at a recent Mobile Learning Symposium at the College of North West London. I think Bring You Own Device has been happening for a number of years, it’s just IT Services in Universities especially have still applied the same ‘old’ model of ‘we provide computers on campus’. Think of the savings the Universities could make if you, say got tablets for all students? They click update on their apps, the OS etc. The Universities could then look to Learning Technologists and IT Professionals to find out how to make better use of these devices, rather than have technicians sorting out hundreds of PCs! You can still have PCs, not just loads of them! We need to get away from PowerPoints on a VLE as ‘e-Learning’. It’s not, skilling our HE Staff to create better, engaging resources – for any device, using easy to use development tools is the answer, but sadly, one which will probably take a generation, as academia often debates too long and doesn’t give enough time for action!
BYOD articulates the politics and tensions that exist in education about not only technology but teaching and learning itself.
There are “Shirky principle” style vested interests in maintaining the status quo and further entrench and expand college data centre and the huge estates of end user computers – at least in the near present time-frame
I think the issue is with how far into the future we are looking.
There can be no doubt that at some point education will snap out of its attention blindness to user own devices it just a question of when – Look out education “Here Comes Everything”.
BYOD goes deeper than just hardware – for me it is symbolic of a shift to “Use Your Own Resources” – for Education to shift from provision to facilitation – to facilitate learners to find and use their own learning, resources and most importantly of all their own Identity.
Look out education – “Here Comes Everyone”
BYOD Exposes the Elephant in the room – equality.
Education operates a sort of “Walled Garden” approach where it provides everything for its learners including relevantly provisioned secured and standardised IT.
While this may not be sustainable in the long term it does provide a degree of equality of access while in the “walled garden” in the present.
Tackling equality of access outside the walls of education is a larger problem but bringing that inequality into the walled garden of education raises concerns for me about BYOD and equality.
Some students can afford and be afforded the advantages of the latest devices and dataplans
There are still many who just cannot afford a device that can access the web at all.
There are those who cannot afford a decent dataplan to make the most of their device.
There are those who cannot afford the latest and most functional devices.
An important factor in BYOD ideas must be digital inclusion. At our colleges I am trying to bring address this where I can – guest network provision is vital as is loan equipment and charitable work with teh most disadvantaged.
We used to operate a laptop loan scheme at Bristol for disadvantaged students. I’m not convinced it worked well – we’d have been better off using the money for larger bursaries for the students to buy a laptop or whatever they want.
We’re now running laptop loan schemes in libraries for all students. You check-it out from the desk, and can use it in the library only. It’s like a thin client PC, but takes up less space in the library than the rows of desktops, and can be used flexibly.
Thought it’s not the whole answer: what if we spend some of that money currently providing computer barns on subsidising hardware for less well-off students instead?
Dataplans are maybe harder to address, but what if some enterprising University worked with a partner to off a plan, or a consortium of colleges became an MVNO?
Some interesting points here, will be good to hear the rest on Friday…
I’ve got some thoughts on this on my blog http://gshaw0.wordpress.com – didn’t want to copy \ paste as it might take up a fair bit of space!
From a technology perspective there are plenty of ways to support BYOD but question is with such a wide range of devices and form factors available now what can we provide that will be usable across the board and provide real added value to the student.
Gerrard,
thanks – interesting blog post. Hopefully we’ll be able to tease out some of the issues you and the other contributors have raised. I’m beginning to think that 45 minutes for the panel session won’t be long enough but am looking forward to chairing it!
Peter
So many comments – I’m delighted by how much interest there is in this!
Universities are ahead on the BYOD trend. Most have for years now run ResNets to hook up student-owned devices. We’ve solved many of the problems – and realised that others actually aren’t issues at all.
The trick is to get yourself out of the old mindset, and apply new, different solutions to new problems. Eg emphasize ease of use, autoconfig, making it just work. Scalable support models, including self-support and community support.
4500 Freshers arrived in Bristol on Sunday and by Monday 4000 of them had self-connected to the network. But how long does it take for us to provision a PC and connect a new member of staff?
BYOD devices for staff is where it gets really interesting – but it’s already happening.
Staff: I foresee a time, not that far off, when IT departments providing devices for staff will seem as antiquated as supplying them with institution-managed chalk and slates.
The trick is to get planning now, so we don’t end up with a whole heap of infrastructure no one wants to use, or that we have designed to make it impossible to use.
The discussion covered a wide range of topics but the overriding conclusion was that there was no need for a BYOD strategy.
The likelihood of students and staff bringing their own devices should be embedded into other strategies such as the Teaching and Learning strategy, the Estates strategy, etc. Estates was seen as particularly important, as even with the best technical infrastructure in the world, if students aren’t able to make use of rooms when they are not in use or if the space they are allowed to use is not flexible, then the benefits to the student of BYOD are lost.
There is a need for engagement with students and staff to identify how they use their own devices to inform design and policy. Part of this engagement is involvement in governance and that will lead to better informed discussion and decisions on policy and procedure. Overall, collaboration with users, be they staff or students, leads to a better understanding of how they use the technology they bring and so allow IT services to provide the services those users need. This may require something of a cultural change within the IT department to encourage all staff to give better consideration of user needs and enable them to use their devices productively. In short, become the IT department that likes to say ‘yes’!