5 Tips to Keeping Your College’s BYOD Control in Check

Struggles to keep BYOD usage under control are common in colleges. Here are 5 ways your college can stay on track.

January 12, 2015 Jessica Kennedy Leave a Comment

Cover Your Use Cases

Miller says colleges should make sure all campus infrastructures are sound and equipped to handle BYOD. That way, colleges will be able to support all necessary use cases on campus.

“I think it’s important to cover all your different use cases, indoor, outdoor, high density, low density,” Miller says. “It’s not a one size fits all, and I think that’s an important point to make. The use of wireless outside on a campus quad is different in a dorm, is different in a classroom, is different in a library. You have to customize the design to match the needs.”

Decide How Much Control Your Class Needs

Miller says it’s a good idea for colleges to decide how much control their professors and administrators need for their classes.

He says the degree of control will affect the tightness of network security, and will help a professor or administrator keep tabs on students’ network access.

“The less control and the more open it is, the easier it is,” Miller says. “But you have less security potentially, and less control.”

Photo by Yale Alumni Magazine.

Bring in a Third Party

Colleges have the option of using third party products to boost BYOD control. Miller says schools can utilize solutions like software to ensure students are off the internet all together while using their devices for classwork.

However, Miller says that while third party products can keep students off a network, it can’t always stop them from getting distracted by their individual devices.

“Some schools have resorted to controlling the access of WiFi and put the kids on a separate device so they can’t get on the internet,” he says. “Kids can still play Solitaire and do things that don’t required internet access, so it’s hard to completely control that access.”

Photo by Circle Technology.

Get Granular with Your Control

Miller says companies like Xirrus can step in to help schools get a grip on their BYOD control.

He says such partnerships enable a school to more carefully manage students’ BYOD experience by customizing network control at a granular level. For example, if a class uses Facebook as a learning tool, professors can control which functions of Facebook can be viewed and used by students, and which ones can’t.

“Some classes use Facebook to share information among groups of students in the class, but they don’t want students playing games on Facebook,” Miller says. “In our case, we can actually block one and not the other, so we can allow the messages, but not games. I think that’s what it’s really coming down to, how much control to you provide through the network so you can customize the experience.”

Up the In-Class Engagement

While BYOD is great for letting students view individual screens during a lesson, it’s sometimes hard to keep them focused.

Miller says that colleges should engage students with their secondary screens, or even have them look up at a communal screen once in a while.

“It’s how you control the screen experience,” he says. “A lot of technologies are coming out that let people get that second screen experience, where they’re seeing the same content that’s broadcasted to everybody on the main screen in the front of the room. They’re able to get that same view on that local device, and vice versa.”

BYOD is a common expectation of today’s college students.

It enables them to manipulate their favorite device during class for note taking, and gives them a personal screen to view a professor’s presentation. It provides them a window of freedom and a realm of privacy to roam the network.

“Today, that means the students have access to information more quickly and readily at many locations,” says Bruce Miller, VP of Product Marketing at Xirrus. “We see that in classrooms and libraries, and moving outdoors in many locations so it’s a ubiquitous experience. It’s that flexibility, the ability to access information much more quickly and readily everywhere.”

But what happens when students abuse that freedom and use their devices to browse through Facebook during class time?

Even worse, what happens when a professor or administrator can’t recapture students’ attention and loses control of what students do on the network?

Don’t worry – you’re not alone.

Miller says losing control of BYOD access is a common struggle in many of today’s higher education institutions.

“It’s a useful tool, but you don’t necessarily know if students are paying attention or doing what they’re supposed to be doing in a given class,” he says. “I hear a lot of professors…talking about finding solutions that enable more control, that are more immutable to getting their work done without having everybody control the experience on their side.”

Miller says colleges can start pulling the reins on students’ BYOD access by accepting these challenges, mapping out strategies and deciphering how tight your control will be.

“In higher ed, I think it’s pretty clear that BYOD is the norm,” he says. “There certainly is technology to support that all the way. It comes down to what your strategy is, your criteria, and solutions available.”

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Jessica Kennedy

Jessica Kennedy is an editor at TechDecisions Media, targeting the higher education market. Jessica joined the TechDecisions team in 2014 and covers technologies that improve teaching and learning.