EDUCAUSE 2016: Update from the Show

Hello from Anaheim! I’ve had the chance to connect with tons of colleges and universities at EDUCAUSE 2016, and there have been many great breakout sessions.

By far, the biggest trend this year is digital everything. Everywhere I look, digital challenges and solutions are front and center. In fact, according to a recent Campus Computing survey, the number one education technology trend people are excited about is digital.

On Wednesday, I got the chance to sit down with some higher education leaders and hear a bit more about their experiences with digital learning – specifically, with virtual learning environments. These experts explained that the chief reason their campuses are turning to digital solutions is to allow students to learn no matter their circumstances.

From L to R: Dov Friedman, CirQlive; Tracy Atkins, GSU; me; Kevin Reeve, USU; and Shane Milam, Mercer.

More often than not, these colleges and universities are seeing results from integrated solutions – students, faculty and staff are finding that easy-to-use and easy-to-understand environments help adoption rates to rise across the board.

Another hot topic here in Anaheim is cybersecurity. EDUCAUSE just released its 2017 list of top IT issues, and security is the number one issue for higher education leaders! People are really excited about digital learning and connected classrooms, but as we adopt these wonderful new technologies we must ensure that our networks and IT environments remain secure. If you missed it, there was a great blog post from EDUCAUSE this week about the importance of protecting data when using collaboration apps.

My colleague Peter Romness spoke yesterday about the importance of cybersecurity in the higher education space. His panelists from the University of Wisconsin spoke on the need for integrated security architecture and how Cisco is helping them achieve their security goals. If you weren’t able to make his session, check out his recent Cisco education blog post for more insight.

(Peter Romness, left and Bob Turner, CISO at the University of Wisconsin-Madison)

The great thing is that higher education institutions don’t have to sacrifice security to get digital ready. In fact, on Wednesday we announced our new Digital Education Platform, which allows users to collaborate using the cloud while still remaining secure. Tools like this are what make me excited for the future of higher education!

Want to see more updates from EDUCAUSE? Make sure to follow us on Twitter at @CiscoHigherEdu and @CiscoEdu.