Kivuto, a provider of academic digital resources, announces its partnership with The Douglas Stewart Company, North America’s distributor of educational software and technology products. Together, they will provide a tailored solution for the management and distribution of the Adobe Student License Pack for Higher Education.
Cloud license management and provisioning is a challenge for academic IT
departments as it is difficult to actively manage those who have access, the
length and amount of access, and the rules around software license use. Kivuto
Cloud addresses these challenges, empowering educational institutions to
effortlessly deliver both product key license verification and distribution,
and named user license distribution for schools where software is required by
students, faculty, and staff.
With the release of Adobe’s new VIP Student License Pack for Higher
Education, Kivuto and Douglas Stewart will work together to provide a tailored
solution for customers and their reseller partners that automates the entire
digital supply, while eliminating the complexities tied to licensing individual
end users. Douglas Stewart’s global reach and extensive education portfolio of
products and services offers Kivuto the opportunity to extend its reach to a
vast array of additional educational markets.
Jeff Blacklock, president at Kivuto, said: “Getting solutions into the hands of key individuals within educational institutions is challenging. Kivuto recognizes Douglas Stewart’s strength in the market and the reputation they have built over the past 65 years as an education reseller. We are pleased to have the opportunity to partner with them, adding extended value in the academic IT sector. With this partnership, Kivuto and Douglas Stewart will work together to solve some of the most challenging problems educational IT departments are faced with today.”
Charles Hulan, president at Douglas Stewart, said: “By partnering with Kivuto, we are now able to offer a solution that enables IT within educational institutions to safely, securely, and confidently verify and distribute software and resources to authorized students, faculty, and staff. Kivuto Cloud enables IT departments to have full control over a centralized model that can provide the much-needed adoption and insights that have been missing for so long. Kivuto Cloud will be a great addition to the solutions we offer to our clients.”
Tools4ever, a leading provider of identity and access management solutions in education, announced a new partnership with Ellucian. The partnership unites two market-driven education solution providers. Mutual customers can now integrate Ellucian’s PowerCampus, Banner and Colleague products with Tools4ever’s Identity and Access Management and Identity as a Service (IDaaS) solutions. This partnership offers mutual customers automated user account lifecycle management across numerous applications, all from a single point of entry.
“It’s an exciting partnership for us, as we can now offer our mutual customers seamless integration between our products,” said Dean Wiech, managing director of Tools4ever in New York. “We have spent more than 20 years of successfully implementing solutions in more than 2,000 educational organizations. Partnering with other market leaders, such as Ellucian, allows us to continue our success in the education market.”
Ellucian and IAM
Ellucian’s SIS and ERP product suite empowers educational institutions to give people the right information at the right time. Their solutions make schools and universities more efficient, informed and capable of delivering great experiences to staff and students. This partnership allows Tools4ever’s IAM solution to connect Ellucian’s product suite to user accounts in Active Directory, G Suite and more. For example, if a staff or student record is created or changed in the SIS, IAM synchronizes the record’s information with all connected systems and applications. Other benefits include helpdesk delegation, self-service access management and access governance processes.
Ellucian and HelloID
The collaboration with Ellucian also extends to Tools4ever’s IDaaS product, HelloID. HelloID is a cloud-based, user-friendly dashboard where students and staff can access all approved teaching and learning applications with a single logi. Single Sign-On to the HelloID’s dashboard and connected applications is available to staff and students from anywhere, on any device, at any time.
“This partnership allows the team at Tools4ever to improve the customer experience and address more of their critical requirements,” stated Managing Director of Tools4ever NY, Dean Wiech.
EDUCAUSE recently released a brief detailing diversity in the higher education information technology (IT) workforce. The report is designed understand factors that help promote and maintain the success of higher education’s IT workforce. The report, “Diversity in Higher Education: Information Technology,” created with CUPA-HR – human resources support for higher education — examines demographic makeup of the higher education IT workforce so as to better understand the workforce today and to identify opportunities in the pipeline for future higher education IT leaders.
This EDUCAUSE brief is a snapshot of diversity and pay
equity in higher education IT, a look at the aging of IT administrators, and
the characteristics of possible pipeline positions from data collected in the
2018 CUPA-HR Administrators in Higher Education, Professionals in Higher
Education and Staff in Higher Education surveys.
In all, EDUCAUSE says higher education entities provided
data for more than 36,577 incumbents in 51 information technology positions for
the 2017-18 academic year.
Among higher education IT employees, 26% are women and 21%
are racial/ethnic minorities. Representation of women and racial/ethnic
minorities in higher education IT is much lower than among college students,
the primary constituent population they serve. According to the report, the
representation of minorities varies greatly within higher education IT, with
far more minorities represented in staff and professional positions than in
administrator roles.
White men make up the majority (59%) of higher education IT
employees, and about 70% of minorities in higher ed IT positions are men.
Black and Hispanic women are the least-represented groups in
higher ed IT, together occupying only about 3% of all IT positions (and only
0.5% of all IT administrative positions).
Increasing diversity
One way to increasing the diversity of higher education,
EDUCAUSE suggests, is for institutions to recruit experienced individuals from
regions of the country with better representation of women and racial/ethnic
minorities. For example, female IT professionals and administrators are better
represented in the Northeast than in the rest of the country, whereas
minorities are much better represented in the South and West. “This data
highlights the need for considering nationwide or regionally-targeted
recruiting strategies when seeking diverse candidates — particularly for
leadership roles,” the report states.
Pay
In general, Black and Hispanic women are underpaid relative
to their white male peers; white women are paid equitably; and Asians are
generally paid more than white men.
Aging, Retirement and the pipeline
An important concern for many U.S. employers is the expected
wave of retirements in leadership positions as the last of the Baby Boomers
(born between 1946 and 1964) turns 55 years old in 2019, with many already at
or past the expected retirement age. Administrators in higher education IT are
no exception. For higher ed IT, this demographic transition may present an
opportunity to make progress on diversity as this less-diverse generation gives
way to a younger, more diverse generation.
The median age of the IT administrators highlighted in this
report is 52 years old; however, the proportion of higher education IT
employees that are older suggests that higher education IT may soon face
succession planning challenges.
Around 43% of IT administrators are 55 years old or older.
The median years in position is seven, but almost 39% of higher education IT
administrators have more than 10 years in their current role. This is high
compared to all administrators in higher education, where the median time in
position is five years, and only 25% of administrators have more than 10 years
in their current position.
Certain IT positions are considered part of the pipeline to
administrative leadership roles. Some of these positions have higher
representation than average for women or individuals from certain racial/ethnic
groups, and may provide opportunities to recruit diverse future leaders as
older employees near retirement.
“Some in higher education IT have argued that to close the
gap on diversity in the field, a different way of thinking about recruitment,
retention, and creating inclusive environments may be necessary, including
deliberate efforts to use this type of data to recruit more diverse leaders,”
the report’s authors write. “Higher education IT may also need to consider
recruiting diverse candidates for leadership roles from outside of higher
education or from positions not typically identified as part of traditional job
progressions.”
EDUCAUSE says the data collected on information technology
positions in higher education can help institutions focus their attention on
key aspects of diversity for this critical part of the higher ed workforce.
“The time to begin succession planning is now — and the data show that certain positions in the immediate higher education IT pipeline may present opportunities to improve DEI in the process,” EDUCAUSE notes.
K-12 and higher education entities require different perspectives on their IT strategy compared to IT strategies for corporate campuses. However, there are common themes and major technology trends that create similar IT challenges for both.
The proliferation of personal internet
connected devices (primarily in the form of cell phones and other gadgets) and
new web applications have caused various tectonic shifts that require similar
fundamental changes in the security posture and campus connectivity strategies.
Corporations have tried to resist the use of personal connected devices within the office network environments and have tried to block the use of other unauthorized web applications even when used to serve some business need. This was an unfruitful strategy and the hidden shadow IT, as it is sometimes called, won this grassroots driven trend. For example, employees started using the freely available file sharing apps (such as Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) when their corporate offered alternative lacked in features and ease-of-use.
Similarly, employees continued to use their personal cell phones for business use cases when it was more convenient. Corporate IT had no choice but to embrace the fact that their employees would bring their own devices and in some cases adopt their preferred applications to solve their specific needs. This set of challenges also goes the other way with corporate provided connected devices finding their uses in personal use cases such as corporate provided laptops being used at homes.
The solution for corporations is to modify their security posture and rethink their connectivity architectures to be able to support the new reality. These changing trends have meant a shift towards a no-trust security posture versus solely relying on a on premise-based firewalling approach. It also meant starting to adopt software defined network architectures, namely, SD-WAN (Software Defined Wide Area Networking), for managing and controlling bandwidth in their campuses.
Educational entities are in a similar situation
when it comes to the proliferation of connected devices and the use of student-driven
applications that can stress the wide area network bandwidth if not properly planned
for. Therefore, it makes sense to look at some of the corporate solutions to
these very same challenges to figure out how to handle the changing security
environment and the increased pressures on bandwidth requirements.
Educational entities and campuses should also
modify their security posture to have a zero-trust model whereby it is
understood that solely protecting the perimeter of the network, although
certainly required, is not enough for a completely secure network design. Unauthorized
and uncontrolled devices (such as personal cell phones) will be present with
all of their malware that may have collected over time and can create a threat
from the inside of the network. Short of keeping these devices off of the
network (which we know is not a practical solution) the next best option is to
carve out and segregate the bandwidth available for such devices out of the
network that the institution uses. By definition, all the sensitive data and
resources will therefore be isolated and protected from any potential malware
that may be on the personal devices.
This approach, which can be achieved with
modern cognitive networking solutions in a highly cost-effective manner, will
also provide the much-needed control of WAN bandwidth usage for both networks.
Once a software-defined approach is adopted, IT
teams can take advantage of various other features that these modern technologies
offer depending on the needs of their networks. For example, multi-WAN
aggregation for additional capacity, adding premises-based or cloud-delivered
UTM (unified threat management) security solutions and various others are some
of the features that can be leveraged.
Even though at a high level corporate networks
and networks of educational institutions are highly different with respect to
their role, the important commonalities in the challenges both environments
face allows both IT teams to learn and adopt solutions that the other has tried
and tested.
Blackboard Inc. has announced the availability of its Blackboard Data developer tier, giving eligible institutions direct access to information to help manage and differentiate their learning ecosystem. Blackboard worked with more than 130 client developers at more than 75 institutions through global engagement events to co-develop the first Blackboard Data platform release.
The announcement was made at BbWorld 2019, Blackboard’s annual users conference that brings together educators, administrators and thought leaders, taking place July 23 through 25 in Austin, Texas.
The first release on the Blackboard Data platform, known as the Blackboard Reporting Stack Developer Tier, will provide clients with direct access to data sets through a Snowflake data warehouse integration. Clients will also have access to the Blackboard Data User Interface, which includes a comprehensive data dictionary and integrated privacy guidance.
The goal, the company said, is to help developers and researchers answer questions to support common educational business goals. Data and tools in the Reporting Stack are now available for eligible clients using the Software as a Service (SaaS) deployment of Blackboard Learn at no additional fee.
“We have placed Blackboard Data right in the heart of our platform both architecturally and operationally,” said Rachel Scherer, senior director of analytics at Blackboard. “This means that not only can we pull data together in one single place, but we can also push it back into the learning ecosystem to make it richer with reliable in-workflow insights. Altogether, the Blackboard Data approach lets us contextualize information and provide insights to the right stakeholders at the right time.”
Blackboard Data is architected to combine activity and usage data across Blackboard’s Teaching and Learning solutions within its SaaS EdTech platform including cloud deployments of Learn, Open LMS, Collaborate, Safe Assign, Ally and the Blackboard app, with more to follow. The data is optimized for reporting and stored in a cloud data warehouse. Customers benefit from an industry-leading interface and simple integration with common business intelligence tools.
This is the first release for the Blackboard Data platform and over time the company will roll out more solutions, it said in the state announcing the launch. Following a SaaS continuous delivery model, Blackboard will expand eligibility across the company’s suite of SaaS-based products and add capabilities for more personas.
To introduce clients to Blackboard Data, Blackboard is launching the 21 Days of Blackboard Data challenge and encouraging all clients to join. Participants will have access to a demo data set with the same user interface as the Developer Tier. Interested clients may learn more and register at https://21days.blackboard.com/.
PowerSchool, a provider of K-12 education technology solutions, announced that it will host its second annual customer event, PowerSchool EDGE, bringing together a community of educators, thought leaders and experts who are passionate about education and the technology that powers it. The 2020 event, scheduled for March 30 – April 1 in Orlando, is expected to be bigger than the 2019 inaugural event.
PowerSchool’s flagship customer event brings together K-12 leaders to connect, learn and grow to improve education and student outcomes. It offers two full days of insights and training to lead students, teachers, schools, and districts to success, or four days for EDGE University, which features extended, in-depth, deep-dive product training.
“PowerSchool’s inaugural EDGE hosted around 1,000 attendees from 48 states, seven countries, and more than half of Canada’s provinces, bringing major K-12 stakeholders together to discuss the most critical topics in education today,” said Anthony Miller, PowerSchool’s chief marketing officer. “Building on the success of our inaugural event, EDGE 2020 promises to be even better—with more in-depth sessions, more certification courses covering more products, and more value for every educator.”
EDGE provides practical training, best practices and industry-leading thought leadership insights for all levels of K-12 roles including curriculum, instruction, technology, HR and finance, as well as administrators, principals and superintendents. PowerSchool EDGE general sessions are focused on company updates, inspirational speakers and education leadership panels. Breakout sessions are broken into four main categories, including thought leadership, best practices, classes and certified training in deep-dive product courses.
Attendees can expect to hear from leaders in more than 40 engaging breakout sessions on today’s key K-12 topics. Gain experience and expertise with hands-on learning, best practices and networking opportunities to grow and develop careers, as well as a deeper understanding of the PowerSchool road map and vision for the future.
Registration is now open at www.powerschool.com/edge. Launch pricing and early-bird discounts are available, starting at $499 for EDGE and $1,900 for EDGE plus EDGE University.
The U.S. Department of Education (Department) is working with Ellucian to clarify the previous alert from July 17, 2019. Some of the issues mentioned in the alert may be unrelated to the vulnerability (Vulnerability) for which Ellucian released a patch on May 14, 2019. The Department and Ellucian have no reason to suspect that a breach has occurred as a result of this vulnerability.
Ellucian has found that there are two separate and distinct issues that bear immediate attention:
The Ellucian Banner vulnerability
Fraudulent admissions applications
The Ellucian Banner Vulnerability
Who is Impacted: The vulnerability only occurs in Ellucian Banner Web Tailor versions 8.8.3, 8.8.4, and Banner Enterprise Identity Services versions 8.3, 8.3.1, 8.3.2, and 8.4. Although Banner Web Tailor 8.9 was previously listed as impacted, it is a roll-up software release that contains all patches and releases since 8.8 and is not affected. Customers not using these software versions are not impacted by this vulnerability.
Actions for Institutions Using Ellucian Banner System: Patches for this vulnerability were issued by Ellucian on May 14, 2019 and are included in all subsequent roll-up software releases. There is no indication that student or institutional data has been compromised. The patched vulnerability is extremely difficult to exploit and unlikely to occur outside of a laboratory setting. Institutions running Ellucian Banner Web Tailor versions 8.8.3, 8.8.4 or Banner Enterprise Identity Services versions 8.3, 8.3.1, 8.3.2, and 8.4 should immediately apply the previously release patches.
Fraudulent Admissions Applications:
Although it was reported that attackers can leverage the vulnerability discussed above to create accounts, Ellucian believes this is not correct. The issue described in the alert is not believed to be related to the previously patched Ellucian Banner System vulnerability and is not exclusive to institutions using Ellucian products. Attackers are utilizing bots to submit fraudulent admissions applications and obtain institution email addresses through admission application portals.
Ellucian recommends adding reCAPTCHA capabilities to the admission process to reduce the likelihood of experiencing fraudulent applications for admissions, even if institutions are not currently experiencing this issue.
For More Information:
Ellucian and the Department will continue to review this matter and update stakeholders as necessary. Additional information is available at Ellucian’s Customer Center and in Ellucian’s FAQ document.News TypeAnnouncements
Edupoint Educational Systems, creator of Synergy Education Platform for K-12 student information and learning management, has won the 2019 EdTech Breakthrough Awards “Student Information System Solution of the Year” for its Synergy Student Information System (SIS). EdTech Breakthrough is a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies and solutions in the global educational technology market.
“The student information system award category is hyper-competitive, and Synergy ‘breaks through’ with its deep focus on enriching the educational experience both in and out of the classroom with an incredibly robust feature set,” said James Johnson, managing director for EdTech Breakthrough. “With Synergy’s powerful student data management capabilities and full suite of mobile apps, we see the platform truly facilitating greater effectiveness, productivity, engagement, and learning. We are thrilled to recognize Edupoint as a 2019 EdTech Breakthrough Award winner.”
The EdTech Breakthrough Awards honor excellence and recognize innovation, hard work, and success in a range of educational technology categories, including Student Engagement, School Administration, Adaptive Learning, STEM Education, e-Learning, Career Preparation and many more. This year’s program attracted over 1,500 nominations from over 12 different countries worldwide.
Synergy SIS “breaks through” the field of K-12 student information systems by working as part of a comprehensive data management ecosystem, Synergy Education Platform, which is designed to work as a single, seamless solution. This major market innovation solves the data movement and integrity challenges districts face with systems assembled from disparate components.
Partner districts can easily add modules and extend functionality – including a robust gradebook and the management of online registration, curriculum, content, assessment, response to intervention, special education, and analytics – with data flowing throughout the system in real time. Synergy SIS also includes a unique suite of native, role-based mobile apps that liberate student data management from office, desk, and classroom.
Rob Wilson
“We are thrilled and honored to accept this award from EdTech Breakthrough for our Synergy Student Information System,” said Rob Wilson, president and chief innovation officer at Edupoint. “We believe that a truly robust and supportive student information system must empower educators to interact with the highest quality, real-time data when and where they need it. Everything we do at Edupoint is directed at providing innovative solutions that create real value for partner districts, and we look forward to introducing ongoing innovations within Synergy SIS to meet their evolving needs.”
PowerSchool, a leading provider of K-12 education technology solutions, announces that its award-winning student information system, PowerSchool SIS, has been selected by the Organization for Educational Technology and Curriculum (OETC) to power their member school districts in California, Washington, and Alaska with secure, flexible, and easy-to-use technology that plays a central role in K-12 education.
Following a rigorous competitive bid process, OETC chose PowerSchool SIS as a recommended option for members, which they can begin implementing now.
OETC Consortium is made up of more than 1,100 educational institutions across three western states. They expertly negotiate contracts on behalf of their members and make purchasing technology convenient, legal, accessible, and affordable for educational institutions. OETC’s selection makes it easier for their members to adopt PowerSchool’s reliable technology without the need to establish a competitive bid process.
“We’re delighted to be able to offer a competitively-bid PowerSchool contract to our more than 1,100 member districts, who can now experience award-winning unified solutions with a leading provider of K-12 education technology,” said Thomas Richards, executive director of OETC. “Although an SIS has been an important part of the educational marketplace for years now, more and more schools are discovering how to use that data to help students. By gaining real-time insight and pinpointing areas of weakness, schools can see enormous gains in attendance and performance.”
With PowerSchool’s industry-leading SIS at the heart of the educational ecosystem, administrators have access to all the tools they need to make sure their district or board runs smoothly. Educators experience simple scheduling, attendance, state reporting, data management, faculty management, enrollment, and more. And they can ensure their data is secure with Microsoft Azure-backed cloud hosting and adherence to the highest security standards. PowerSchool also offers the largest and most active customer community of hundreds and thousands of users for networking, learning, and best practices.
Hardeep Gulati
“PowerSchool SIS supports tens of millions of students globally and is the solution OETC members can trust to provide a fully flexible, configurable, and scalable student information system that will serve as the backbone of their education technology, and our team is committed to working with districts through every step to ensure their success at every level,” said PowerSchool CEO Hardeep Gulati. “We’re proud to work with OETC and look forward to powering their member districts with modern, integrated technology that helps educators and students realize their potential, in their way.”
Blackboard Inc., a leading education technology company for teaching, learning and student engagement, announces the winners of the 2019 Blackboard Catalyst Awards.
Founded in 2005, the annual Catalyst Awards recognize and honor innovation and excellence in the Blackboard global community of practice, where millions of educators and learners work every day to redefine what is possible when leveraging technology. Winners are selected by a cross-functional team of Blackboard experts. The honorees from across the globe will be recognized during Blackboard’s annual user conference BbWorld, to be held July 23-25, 2019 in Austin, TX.
“We’re thrilled to honor this year’s Blackboard Catalyst Award winners for their commitment to improving the educational experience for all learners through EdTech and sharing these insights with the broader community,” said Lee Blakemore, chief client officer and president, global markets at Blackboard. “Clients like these inspire us to accelerate innovation that drives student success and we’re proud to be a part of their story.”
Below are the winners, listed by category:
Leading Change: This award recognizes institutions that have developed practices and/or technologies that have had a measurable effect on learning outcomes, student performance, or academic progression. The winners are:
Command & General Staff College, US Army, Kansas, U.S., Dr. Michelle Miller
Higher Colleges of Technology, United Arab Emirates, Dr. Abdullatif Alshamsi
North Dakota University System, North Dakota, U.S., Core Technology Services Team
Sam Houston State University Online, Texas, U.S., Dr. Ruth Chisum, Jacob Spradlin, Thomas Sosebee, Ray Scheel, Daniel Walker, Kendall Tew, Ricki Hodges, Madelyn Kilgore
Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Peru, Digital Learning Team
Wake Technical Community College, North Carolina, U.S., Project COMPASS Team
Community Engagement: This award recognizes clients who are improving student achievement by fostering a connection between school districts, institutions, educators, students, and their communities. The winners are:
Florida Virtual School, Orlando, U.S., Marketing & Communications Team
Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Peru, Digital Learning Team
Teaching & Learning: This award recognizes those who have adopted flexible, distance and online delivery, including using mobile technologies to positively impact the educational experience. The winners are:
Boise State University, Idaho, U.S., Dr. Krishna Pakala
Davidson Academy Online, Nevada, U.S., Course Design Team
Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky, U.S., Dr. Margaret Zoellers, Dr. Alison Connell, Dr. Angela Wood, Dr. Brenda Caudill, and Mr. Chris Daniel
Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky, U.S., Dr. April Blakely, Ms. Esther Tattershall
Indian River State College, Florida, U.S., Criminal Justice Department and Virtual Campus Learning Teams
Universidad CNCI, Mexico, Arely Martinez, Ericka Oaxaca, Anai Cano. Sophia Villanueva
University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, U.S., Dr. Catherine Barber, Dr. Janet McCollum
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Texas, U.S., Dr. Ramiro de la Rosa
Inclusive Education: This award honors those institutions whose methods have ensured their pedagogy, content, technology, and educational services are fully inclusive and supportive of all learners with disabilities. The winners are:
Medical University of South Carolina, South Carolina, U.S., Instructional Technology Team
The University of Texas at El Paso, Texas, U.S., Center for Instructional Design Team
Optimizing Student Experience: This award honors those institutions whose educational and administrative innovations have markedly improved the total learner experience. The winners are:
Grand Valley State University, Michigan, U.S., Dr. Szymon Machajewski
Norfolk State University, Virginia, U.S., Shelley Scott-Johnson
Northwest Florida State College, Florida, U.S., NWF Online
Zayed University, United Arab Emirates, Dr. Adam Marks
Training & Professional Development: This award recognizes those who use Blackboard programs to support and enhance professional development within or outside of their organization. The winners are:
Angelo State University, Texas, U.S., Learning Technology Support Team
Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires, Argentina, Juan Manuel Pachon Jimenez
National University, California, U.S., Heather Leslie, Alejandra Lizardo, Ashley Kovacs
Sam Houston State University Texas, U.S., Online Operations Team
The University of Texas at El Paso, Texas, U.S., Academic Technologies Team
Washtenaw Community College, Michigan, U.S., Nancy Collison, Patricia Campbell, Sean Thomas
Student Success: This award recognizes individuals and/or institutions whose creative program application has led to increased retention, increased completion, and/or improved outcomes. The winners are:
Grupo Ser Educacional S.A., Brazil, Distance Learning Education Team
IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Spain, Miquel Hernández, Angel Pallares
Keiser University, Florida, U.S., Online Division Team
