The importance of digital services in institutions is being reflected at a fundamental level with the convergence of digital and traditional infrastructure. Networks, servers, storage, cybersecurity, and communications have become as important as buildings and other traditional physical facilities.
Chief technology officers (CTOs) and CIOs are being brought into campus planning much earlier in the process, said Byron Collins, Executive Director and CTO at the University of Melbourne.
“Increasingly, we’re being involved right up front in the actual framing of the master plan—being asked to gather data from the Wi-Fi network, from physical tracking such as cameras in lecture theatres, to start looking at where students are going and where staff are moving around the place. We can start to optimise retail offerings, start to congregate 24/7 spaces, that we can make secure,” Collins said.
Digital infrastructure needs to be flexible, scalable, and robust, so that it can support evolving teaching and learning models—both on and off campus—and provide the personalised digital services that students now expect. This is a big challenge, but one that’s made easier by the new breed of technologies, such as software-defined networking, that can self-diagnose and are capable of responding to changing conditions automatically.
These technologies are essential for creating a seamless experience for staff and students. For the New York University (NYU) Shanghai, that means ensuring that students receive the same digital experience at any campus they attend, said Director of IT, Pan Chang.
“If a student closes a laptop in New York [at NYU] and then they come to [NYU] Shanghai and open the laptop, they must connect to the same network, the same experience,” he said.
Integrating and implementing these tools often require collaborating with partners, such as technology companies and even architects.
Campuses, and their digital extensions, are becoming a “learning laboratory” for architects and planners, said Rob McGauran, Founder and Director at MGS Architects.
“We want students to come to the campus in a different way, we want them to engage across disciplines,” he said. “We want our buildings to be used more effectively, to generate more benefit. We want to know that we are investing in things that deliver that benefit over time. We want to know that our ecological footprint is diminishing. And when you think about all of those measures—so many of those are best brought together through digital platforms.”
Another focus is using technology to foster “serendipitous social engagement” among students, he said. “Students are becoming a manifest part of master plans—how do we create these peer-to-peer social spaces that are digitally rich inside and outside on campus?”
For Collins, catering for the ever-growing need to capture and use data is top of mind.
“You need to think about building a backbone, and making sure that your ability to capture data is two or three times beyond what it is at present. But beyond that none of us have the ability to predict what the world will look like in 10 years’ time. The best we can do is to put the right infrastructure in place and allow people to work out how to use that infrastructure in lots of different ways.”