#GoToGetsIT: This article is part of an ongoing series from GoTo’s thought leaders on the frontlines: Our Solutions Consultants deeply understand our customers’ unique challenges and connect the right solutions to meet their goals using GoTo technology. Here, they share their industry knowledge on what it takes to help businesses everywhere thrive in a remote or hybrid world.
Between serving faculty, admins, students, guest lecturers, and plenty of BYODs, IT teams in the education sector face a unique set of challenges. By implementing the right set of IT tools, the burden of keeping professors, teachers, and students working and productive can be alleviated, and schools can safely meet the needs of those machines and devices on and off their intranet.
What staff expects from IT
Professors or teachers simply need reliable tools to teach students remotely and in the classroom. Learning Management Systems like Canvas can be deployed, but some faculty just use a simple website with agendas, calendars, and assignments instead. Either way, they most likely need the support of the school’s IT department. And since most days are filled with classroom work and meeting with students, this help will likely need to come outside regular working hours, and often from a remote location.
Remote support tools have become a mandate, and the IT department should be looking at something easy for non-technical faculty to utilize, as well as robust enough to have state-of-the-art security and the features IT needs to resolve any problem.
Tools like GoTo Resolve and Rescue that are tried and true in the IT support industry, make for wise choices. They allow IT technicians to be logged in from a mobile device, as well as any browser on any Mac or PC, from anywhere – so the IT technician can grab breakfast at the local coffee shop while running a quick support session. For the teacher or staff member who needs assistance, they simply need to click on a link that has been sent to them in email or via SMS text and they can quickly get into a live screen-sharing session with the expert.
Tools like these, with user-friendly interfaces, make it pain-free on both sides, and allow folks to focus on getting the problem solved, rather than get bogged down in unsupported devices and difficult join experiences. Because these tools are based in the cloud and use standard web traffic ports, the connections are firewall friendly, simple to execute, and best of all have built-in encryption.
What students expect from IT
It’s a given that among the student population there will be a mix of Chromebooks, iPhones, Android phones, tablets, and laptops. In fact, these days, students are writing full papers on their phones. Using an older IT solution today that doesn’t support mobile is like using an abacus to calculate astrophysics. With an IT tool that does support mobile along with all the other devices and platforms, you’ll be able to problem solve at a much faster speed while making sure students are covered. You can meet them where they are by making sure your communications, connections, and everything they access are mobile friendly.
All the other stuff that makes IT truly complex
Inevitably, across every classroom there will be a mix of different projectors, smart TVs, laptops, and monitors. Physical hardware brings in a slew of further disparities that IT professionals must manage. Let's face it: being in IT in a school or university is complicated. There are enormous amounts of variables to consider.
By investing in IT products that are truly easy to deploy, use, update and manage, you’ll be saving your school money, saving yourself time, and providing better service to that eager, smart, and demanding population. Choosing products that have proven security measures built in are especially critical. Zero trust enhanced security keys, 256-bit AES encryption, and multi-factor authentication for adding an additional level of security that can be enabled at the entire account level, or options to deploy SSO logins, are some such security measures. Services that have this built in while also being firewall friendly are necessary, making secure and easy connections for students and staff on multiple platforms and devices.
How to simplify
There are ways to simplify the complexity of supporting an educational community. For example, a product like GoTo Resolve gives you remote monitoring and management, help desk, conversational ticketing, detailed reporting, and more. All in one easy to use tool.
