University of Vermont Gives Business Students Real-World Technology Experience

Microsoft Office System
Customer Solution Case Study
/ / University of Vermont Gives Business Students Real-World Technology Experience
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Higher education
Customer Profile
The University of Vermont, based inBurlington, has 8,150 undergraduates in 90 areas of study. The School of Business Administration has 26 full-time professors and about 860 students.
Business Situation
The school wanted to provide undergraduates with portable, easy-to-use technology that could help with collaboration and organization.
Solution
The school decided to standardize on Microsoft®Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition and Office Professional Edition 2003 running on Gateway M275 Tablet PCs.
Benefits
Enhanced collaboration and communication
Increased flexibility in teaching and research
Increased organizational capabilities forsmarter studying
Simpler IT management with improved security
Real-world preparation for the future / “Office Professional Edition 2003 and Tablet PCs are an excellent fit for higher education because we can capture and share thoughts and drawings on virtual paper for a better grasp of concepts.”
Tom Chittenden, Lecturer and Client Services, The University of VermontSchool of Business Administration
The University of Vermont School of Business Administration wanted to make it easier for students to communicate, collaborate, learn, and eventually thrive in the business world. The varied portable computers used by the undergraduate students did not facilitate note taking or organization of information. The school chose to require incoming students to standardize on Gateway M275 Tablet PCs running Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition and Office Professional Edition 2003. Students now integrate and organize their information in a single, searchable, sharable location using Microsoft Office OneNote® 2003. Using Microsoft Windows SharePoint® Services sites, students and faculty collaborate on projects, streamlining productivity and minimizing version control issues. Best of all, students are gaining experience using tools that they’ll need to get ahead in the working world.

Situation

The University of Vermont, located in Burlington, is home to 8,150 undergraduates, 1,200 graduate students, 400 medical students, more than 1,050 full-time faculty, and 2,220 full-time staff. Among the university’s eight undergraduate schools and colleges is the School of Business Administration, which employs 26 full-time faculty and 14 staff serving 860 undergraduate students per year.

One of the goals of the school is to prepare students to enter the business world. “It’s critical that we give our students the tools tosucceed in business, so the management of—and access to—technology is a crucial partof a business education,” says Tom Chittenden, Lecturer and Client Services for The University of Vermont School of Business Administration.

The school has required its students to own computers since 1984 and the computers to be connected to the campus network since 1993. As technology progressed, so did the school’s requirements. In 1999, for example, portable computers became the school standard when prices lowered enough to meet the price cap set by the university’s board of trustees.

The school’s goal is for students to use portable computers for everything from note taking to research papers to test taking. To reach that goal, the school looked for a mobile productivity tool that could do more than simply replace students’ desktop systems. However, the school discovered that integrating portable computers into the undergraduate routine was a challenge for both students and faculty.

“Students tended to buy the biggest and heaviest laptops, so they rarely brought them to class,” says Robert Rohr, Lead Programmer for The University of Vermont School of Business Administration. “Plus, typing notes into a regular computer application just didn’t feel natural to a lot of the students.”

When students did use their portable computers in class, many instructors disliked the physical barriers of the upright screens, which prevented eye contact with students. “The faculty was finding it distracting to have students watching their screens or the screens in the row in front of them, and the cumulative noise of keyboards added an auditory distraction,” says James Kraushaar, PhD, Associate Professor of Management Information Systems for The University of Vermont School of Business Administration. “Some professors even told students not to bring their computers to class.”

The wide variety of software and hardware acquired by students made it difficult for the school help desk to offer support and facilitate access to the university network. Many older computers could not adequately run some of the software required by the school.

The School of Business Administration determined that it needed to adopt software and hardware standards so that everyone would use the same, up-to-date technology tools. And the school wanted to make sure that its students would gain experience with the same tasks that people in the business world perform. Therefore, the school looked for software that would help students with note taking, team collaboration, spreadsheet analysis, database management, electronic mail, formal presentations, and word processing.

Solution

The choice for its portable computer software was an easy one for the School of Business Administration. The school has led the way in establishing Microsoft® productivity tools as the standard across campus. The school has a Microsoft Campus Agreement and is a member of the MSDN® Academic Alliance, which helps the organization deploy the most current versions of software to students.

The School of Business Administration chose to deploy Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, the Microsoft Office Visio® Professional 2003 drawing and diagramming software, and the Microsoft Office OneNote® 2003 note-taking program. The productivity tools were selected in part because they integrate well with the back-end systems used by the school, including the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system and Exchange Server 2003 communication and collaboration server, both of which are part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software. The school also uses Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services technology in Windows Server for collaboration among students and faculty.

Choosing the Right Hardware

Based on the belief that sensitive screens with “ink” technology offeringthe capability toreceive input from a specialized writing instrument are the future of most portable computers, the school decided that Tablet PCs would support students while in school and position them for their future business careers. The ability to use Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 to synchronize notes with audio recordings and create binders of multimedia information also held great appeal.

The School of Business Administration purchased both slate and convertible Tablet PCs and conducted extensive research to determine which designwould best suit students and faculty members.For both Tablet PC styles, a special pen is used directly on the screen to select, drag, and open files, and also to record handwritten notes. The slate designdoes not have a permanent keyboard; the convertible designhas an attached keyboard and looks like a conventional portable computer, but the screen can be rotated 180 degrees to lay flat over the keyboard.

The school found the convertible design to be more appropriate for its student and faculty needs. “The slate models typically require an external CD drive in addition to the keyboard and docking station, which just doesn’t fit into the lifestyle of an 18-year-old student,” says Nicole Chittenden, Information Technology Manager for The University of Vermont School of Business Administration. “The students we polled preferred the integrated keyboard and CD drive, and the flexibility to alternate between slate and laptop modes.”

Gateway performed an on-campus demonstration of its Tablet PC running the Microsoft Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition operating system, and the School of Business Administration was impressed. “The full-screen Gateway M275 Tablet PC was the most viable, affordable option that we saw for our students,” says Nicole Chittenden.

Putting the Solution to Work

In August 2004, the School of Business Administration required all new undergraduate students to purchase the Gateway M275 Tablet PCs. The school expects students who transfer into the school and new first-year students admitted in fall 2005 to purchase the units by the end of 2005.

The School of Business Administration faculty incorporated the new solution into the curriculum.Now, some lectures are given in a classroom in which the students’ Tablet PCs are connected to the network so that students can fill out electronic forms and respond to questions to provide immediate feedback to the professor. Students also take notes in OneNote 2003 and use their Tablet PCs for test taking.

Outside class, students use Office Professional Edition 2003 for word processing, spreadsheet analysis, and presentations, and they gain e-mail access using the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client when on the campus network and Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access when away. With Windows SharePoint Services sites, students can collaborate ongroup projects and share information for group studying.

Benefits

The University of Vermont School of Business Administration is providing its students with the same productivity and collaboration tools used by many business professionals today. Students can smoothly communicate and collaborate with peers and professors, and they can stay better organized, which helps promote effective study skills. Plus, by incorporating technology into their teaching, faculty members can hone their lessons to facilitate in-depth understanding. “The solution provides a strong foundation for building student skills in communicating and sharing with other students, faculty, and staff,” says Rocki-Lee DeWitt, PhD, Dean of The University of Vermont School of Business Administration.

Enhanced Collaboration and Communication

Communication among students and faculty members at the School of Business Administration has improved significantly as a result of the Office collaboration tools and Windows SharePoint Services. “The peer-to-peer interaction among both students and professors is becoming more and more popular because they have so many tools at their disposal,” says John Ritter, Project Analyst for The University of Vermont School of Business Administration. “They can use Outlook Web Access to send and receive email from anywhere, and use SharePoint sites for document collaboration.”

In the classroom, having a standardized solution is making a difference because professors can easily share student work with others. “Knowing my students are using the same Office programs that I am means that I can be more interactive with their work in class,” says Kraushaar. “I can pull a student’s solution to a problem and project it on the screen for the class to evaluate before I show my own solution.”

SharePoint sites currently are in place at the school, and word of their value is spreading. Students are required to work on projects for real companies in groups of two to four, so some savvy groups have begun to request project sites, which then are set up by the School of Business Administration IT department. “One of the biggest advantages of SharePoint sites is that students can all work together on one document, rather than trying to weave together their separate pieces at the end or worrying about version control,” says Ritter.

Once the school implements Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 in late 2005, managing a larger number of SharePoint sites will be easier for the school’s IT department and students will be actively encouraged to take advantage of the opportunity to work together more effectively.

The mobile nature of the Tablet PCs is helping students collaborate, even when theyaren’t using a SharePoint site to do so. “Our students carry their Tablet PCs down the hall to work with others or ask for help, almost the way they’d grab a magazine as they’re walking out the door,” says Tom Chittenden. “The Tablet PCs are that convenient and that useful for all of us on campus.”

Increased Flexibility in Teaching and Research

Because the Tablet PC pen is so much quieter than a keyboard and the screen folds down flat to leave classroom views unobstructed, faculty members now encourage in-class note taking with Tablet PCs for all of their students. In fact, many faculty and staff members themselves have adopted the Tablet PC with Microsoft productivity tools. For professors, the Tablet PC has become a replacement for the chalkboard—one in which in-class notes and diagrams are saved and posted to public folders, rather than erased. “With OneNote 2003, I use a lot more diagrams to illustrate my points because now students can watch and listen as I draw, which is more educational than looking at a predrawn final object,” says Kraushaar.

Professors also make use of their new technology outside the classroom. “Our faculty members do a lot of research, and they are enthusiastic about OneNote 2003 because they can download information into their computers and write their notes directly on the documents,” says Tom Chittenden. “It’s a much cleaner way for them to save, catalog, and organize their sources and notes, and coming back to their data and references is much quicker this way, too.”

For many professors, the new solution has revolutionized the way that they prepare for their classes. “I love the ability to be so much more organized using OneNote 2003,” says Kraushaar. “My office traditionally was filled with paper because I used to keep a folder for every course section that I’ve taught, with each folder being somewhere between one and five inches thick. I do everything electronically now—inking, diagramming, creating [Microsoft Office] PowerPoint®[2003] slides for my presentations, and organizing homework.”

Increased Organizational Capabilities for Smarter Studying

The ability to search and annotate notes in OneNote 2003 that are integrated with diagrams and other documents contributes to better study skills. “The way that OneNote 2003 naturally captures handwritten notes and its integration with other technologies are terrific,” says Tom Chittenden. “We teach students all about the OneNote 2003 extended features, including the indexed audio-to-hand notes, integrated PowerPoint functionality, and downloaded files.”

Students can gather information in a single place by copying diagrams and notes and dragging pictures, charts, text, or Web site content into an OneNote2003 document, which also lists the original file locations for reference. It’s also a quick, straightforward task for students to input their OneNote 2003 notes into other Office programs such as Microsoft Office Word 2003, PowerPoint 2003, and the Microsoft Office Excel®2003 spreadsheet software. All the notes are searchable, so students can quickly find pertinent information. “I can easily go back to check my notes from last semester without having to find a separate notebook,” says Erin Schumacher, a first-year student at The University of Vermont School of Business Administration.

OneNote 2003 even helps students synthesize their written notes and recorded lectures because it’s easy for students to index and flag key points for later review. Says Andrew Edwards, a first-year student at The University of Vermont School of Business Administration, “It’s nice to not to have so much crumpled paper around. I take notes in OneNote 2003 and sometimes I transform the notes to text, or draw a picture or a graph, and save those. I also can record lectures. If my notetakingcan’t keep up with the lecture, I can turn on the audio and record what the professor is saying. OneNote2003 was easy to learn, too. I love it and highly recommend it.”

Students also use OneNote 2003 to flag their homework tasks for each class and to show them a comprehensive view of their tasks. “OneNote 2003 delivers a lot of advantages in that electronic notes are harder to lose, they’re easy to search through and organize, and they’re sharable with fellow students or colleagues,” says Nicole Chittenden. “Also, research indicates that students learn better when they hand-write their notes, so using the pen may provide an added advantage to our students.”

One of the biggest reasons that students are changing their study habits is that the Tablet PCs are easy to use—and students want to use them. “Nobody wanted to cart around heavy traditional portable computers, and even when they did they could use them only in a limited way,” says Nicole Chittenden. “Tablet PCs certainly set the standard for ‘cool’ when it comes to technology, so students are eager to take them everywhere. The more students use the Tablet PCs, the more valuable they become from a learning standpoint.”

Adds Tom Chittenden, “We’ve seen a lot of signs that the students are embracing the new technology. In fact, we recently initiated a voluntary user satisfaction survey and received overwhelmingly positive feedback about Office Professional Edition 2003 and the Tablet PCs. When users are comfortable with and excited about their technology, they’re more likely to put it to good use.”