The rise of new technologies has had a significant impact on the educational system. The digital transformation demands that these technologies, present today in many sectors, are also used in education. As? Through digital and innovative solutions that improve both teaching and student learning.
The problem is that incorporating these technologies is not always an easy task. Especially if we take into account that educational centers are large entities, with thousands of people involved (both teachers and students, researchers and staff members).
One of the main problems arises from the complexity of installing certain digital resources. Where do I get the software I need? What license should I download? What if I have a problem during the installation of the program? This directly affects ICT staff, who are often overwhelmed by such incidents.
Given this situation, what is then the best way to implement digital tools in learning and teaching?
One of the universities that has succeeded in promoting the use of digital tools in the classroom has been HOGENT, the largest university in Belgium in the field of applied sciences and the arts, with 17,500 students and 2,000 staff members.
The objective of the center was to bring ICTs closer to the entire team, from the students to the teachers, passing through the staff, so that all of them could carry out their tasks in the best possible way.
One of the concerns of the Hogent management team was that both teachers and students could have access to the necessary software to develop teaching and learning at the time they needed it. That is, that the programs were fully accessible.
It was then that the university realized that organizing the deployment and management of software licenses across all student and staff devices was a challenge. To be able to carry out this task, I would need a partner who knows not only the most technical part of this task, but also how the educational context works.
HOGENT University decided to have Academic Software, a platform that offers all users in the educational community a single access to all the next-generation digital assets they need (such as Microsoft Office 365, Adobe Creative Cloud or Google Workspace, among others). ).
Academic Software allows users to access all the academic software they need through a single login, that is, it will be enough to use the account of the educational center. Access can be done at any time and from any device.
“Since we have used Academic Software, no student resorts to illegal software because they cannot access a licensed version. We have achieved a kind of collective use good. In addition, uncertainty about the use of digital resources in teaching and learning tasks is over,” explains Bart De Rouck, Head of ICT at HOGENT.
Academic Software also offers a multilingual technical support service, which guides users in their access to each software, both by email and via chat or phone. This has allowed the HOGENT team to free themselves from tasks and doubts about implementation and access to the software, being able to dedicate their efforts to other matters.
