A recent survey by International Data Corporation (IDC) reveals that 60% of business executives from educational institutions in Western Europe expect mobile technologies to improve the student experience.
The survey shows that in late 2013 in Western Europe 46% of respondents had already invested in mobile device management to meet the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) requirements of students and teaching staff, 37% were planning to invest in native applications for students, and 45% were planning to invest in native applications for staff.
These findings are consistent with IDC’s earlier findings about the education industry in Western Europe:
- IT spending in Western Europe’s education industry will grow slowly over the next couple of years, but this will not stop CIOs from supporting innovation in the student experience.
- Laptops will remain the preferred device of university and college students for assignments and projects, but smart phones will be complementary tools. Native apps will be a popular architectural approach to deliver mobile resources in the next two to three years, but uptake of responsive design will speed up the transition to portals, especially for large universities with many departments and students.
- Over the next 12–18 months, CIOs will support mobile-enablement of administrative use cases (such as class scheduling and access to student records), learning resources, and consumer apps providing productivity tools.
- University and college CIOs that want to mobile-enable student services will need to prioritize use cases and align architectural choices — VDI, native apps, mobile portals — to those business requirements. If they do not, costs and risks could get out of control.
“Higher and further education CIOs should prioritize use cases and choose, for each, the best architectural approach that offers consistent user experience across devices so that students can choose their preferred device and channel of interaction without jeopardizing information security and performance,” said Massimiliano Claps, EMEA research director, IDC Government Insights.
