Live@eduEducation Solution Case Study

Anytime, anywhere access to Leeds City College resources through Live@edu

OverviewCountry or Region: United KingdomIndustry: Education

Customer ProfileLeeds City College is the third largest college in the U.K. with more than 50,000 students attending six campuses located in and around the region.

Business SituationLeeds City College wanted a communications infrastructure that would deliver services more effectively and foster improved learning outcomes.

SolutionWorking with Salford Software, Leeds City College decided to meet the needs of six campuses with a single Microsoft Live@edu deployment.

Benefits Cost efficient communications

solution. Easy access for students at any time

and from anywhere. Reduced demands on IT team.

“Here at Leeds City College we are thrilled with the results of the Microsoft Live@edu implementation. The uptake by students and feedback has been very positive and we expect this to continue.”

Graham Eland, Head of IT Systems and Strategy, Leeds City College...

With more than 50,000 students attending six campuses located in and around the region, Leeds City College is the third largest college in the United Kingdom. Like many academic institutions, Leeds City College is trying to reduce costs while simultaneously improving operational efficiencies and educational outcomes. To facilitate both goals, the IT team at the college wanted to replace the existing client-based email system with a more modern solution that would provide students with tools and features that could facilitate the completion of their studies with success. The college turned to Salford Software, which helped Leeds City College roll out Microsoft Live@edu to students on all six campuses. Students can now access this cloud-based unified communications and collaboration solution from wherever they are—at home, on campus, or anywhere else—whenever they want to. Live@edu has also helped reduce the costs associated with communications while helping to improve online collaboration.

SituationLeeds City College is the third largest college in the United Kingdom, with more than 50,000 students attending six campuses in the city and the surrounding area. The college mission and values promote the college as a place of excellence for learning and skills development, delivered within a forward-thinking and innovative environment that operates effectively and efficiently.

Like many academic institutions, cost reductions and a need to improve operating efficiencies are high on the agenda for Leeds City College. The IT team saw an opportunity to facilitate both goals by replacing the college’s aging client-based student email system with one that would provide students with a broader range of tools and features. Not only could such a solution help students complete their studies more successfully and efficiently, but exposure to newer generations of technology would deliver a strategic benefit in preparing students to interact with the kinds of technologies that they could expect to find in their future work environments.

Solution“The team at the college understood that in order to be competitive and stay ahead, we needed to meet, if not exceed, the expectations of our customers—the students,” says Graham Eland, Head of IT Systems and Strategy at Leeds City College. “Students want to be able to access the information and resources they require, whenever they want to. Our task was to ensure that they could do this effectively and efficiently.”

To achieve this goal, Eland and his team selected Salford Software to find and deploy a new email solution. Together they embarked upon the journey to transform the student experience.

The key business drivers for Leeds City College were:

Improving the user experience for better learning outcomes.

Delivering an improved, more efficient service to students.

Embracing the ethos of the college to drive IT forward.

Automating provisioning and de-provisioning for improved security.

Reducing the costs and proving efficiencies.

Providing tools which were familiar to users.

Building on success for future plans and phases.

Following a pilot of the Live@edu, a full live version was implemented and is now in operation across all six campuses. Students can access their email, SkyDrive, and Messenger wherever they are—whether at home or on one of the campuses—whenever they want to.

BenefitsLive@edu has enabled Leeds City College to achieve significant reductions in the amount of time and resources required to create accounts. Previously manual processes have been automated for far greater efficiency.

Upon enrollment, students are automatically provisioned with a college network and Live@edu account. They are

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presented with a college email account and storage space, plus access to the college portal. When they finish their studies, they are either be de-provisioned or moved to an alumni account for continued association.

Student email is branded with the college logo and the domain name reflective of the institution. Thanks to Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager, users have a Single Sign On, which effectively means that they sign in once to access all the resources they need. No longer must they log in multiple times to access multiple resources.

SkyDrive provides the students with 25 GB of storage space. This can be used for collaboration on projects or assignments or simply saving documents and other information and files, academic or personal. The move to the Cloud gives the college the opportunity to offer students much more flexibility in the way that they work. With so much online storage space, they no longer need to bring pen drives or save their work to a portable hard drive.

Awareness Taking steps to maximize the opportunity that the solution could bring and to ensure that as many users as possible signed up to use the new service, the IT team at the college introduced a learning or adoption strategy through:

Widening awareness via tutors and college staff.

Global messaging to students. Training workshops or drop ins for

assistance.

The IT team is passionate about taking full advantage of the technology to create a superior learning environment. The team has come a long way in a short space of time and has already been able to recognize the true value of its investment.

More with less Doing more with less and realizing a return on its investment has been very rewarding for everyone at Leeds City College. In a matter of just six weeks, almost 20 percent of the student population had registered for the service, and this number grows daily. While college officials are realistic about the likelihood of reaching 100 percent uptake, they remain committed to getting as close as possible to a full quota.

The new system is safe, secure, flexible, and affordable. The cost of delivering a similar system in house would have required an initial outlay of more than £150,000—and that figure does not include the running costs, training requirements, energy, or replacement hardware costs.

Leeds City College students now benefit from:

College email and storage with increased capacity.

Familiar tools online promoting a productive learning environment.

Anytime, anywhere, anyhow secure access.

Better collaboration and communication with peers.

The College IT team has delivered a solution which demonstrates:

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Reduced costs for hardware and initial outlay.

Reduced running costs, energy and training.

Automation of provisioning of Live@edu accounts at enrolment.

Improved ways of collaborating and engaging with students.

Password Self Service Looking beyond the more obvious cost savings that have been achieved the college has also implemented a password self-service solution. This simple but effective tool is a notable achievement. With a population of 50,000 students, the potential for a password reset queue was huge. Now students are presented with a series of challenge and response questions. Once they answer the questions correctly, they can reset their passwords. This way, users can continue to be productive without having to wait for a response. The IT team can focus on other issues and further improve services.

The success of the project has been fantastic. Students have welcomed the changes and flexibility now available to them.

“Here at Leeds City College we are thrilled with the results of the Microsoft Live@edu implementation,” says Graham Eland, Head of IT Systems and Strategy, Leeds City College. “The uptake by students and feedback has been very positive and we expect this to continue. We are looking forward to the next phase which we anticipate will see similar improvements for staff.”

The College is currently considering the next phases of the project to automate staff provisioning and de-provisioning.

“We believe that the learning environment provided through IT at Leeds City College will allow our students to develop their skills in preparation for the workplace or further study,” Eland goes on to say.

Microsoft EducationMicrosoft technology, programs, and solutions can improve teaching and learning opportunities for instructors and students and make education administration more successful.

For more information about Microsoft Education please go to:www.microsoft.com/educationwww.microsoft.com/education/schoolswww.microsoft.com/education/higheredwww.microsoft.com/liveatedu

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com

For more information about Salford Software products and services, call 0161 906 2233 or visit the Web site at: www.salfordsoftware.co.uk

For more information about Leeds City College call 0845 045 7275 or visit the website at www.leedscitycollege.ac.uk

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published December 2011

Software and Services Services− Live@edu