This blog post is based on a fireside chat with Northumbria University, available on demand, on how the university rolled out Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops to its staff and students. The event featured the insights of Craig Bramley, Lead Systems Engineer at Citrix; Simon Corbett, IT Director at Northumbria University; and Quintin Smith of the configuration team at Northumbria University.
While the last 15 months have been challenging for us all, it has also been a time of immense activity, creativity, and innovation. Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, is leading the way for higher education institutions with how it has innovated and leveraged technology to deliver active blended learning.
Yes, COVID-19 Affected IT Strategy
Northumbria University had an IT strategy — written at the start of 2020 — that included an “anytime, anywhere” mantra with the objective of being more flexible for staff and students. In many ways they were one step ahead.
COVID-19 accelerated this strategy as the number of people who suddenly had to work remotely grew at an unexpected rate. The university had the technology such as PCs and an established cloud strategy to deliver remote working, which had been around for many years as a tactical solution. But they didn’t know how they would leverage the technology in a short time to enable all their users, sitting at home with the correct software and hardware, to run the apps and enjoy an optimal experience.
With Remote PC Access, they were able to access assets they already had on premises, in physical machines, and use GPUs, which allowed rapid deployment. There was no other way of physically getting to these devices. And after navigating licensing challenges, Northumbria University enabled a blend of teaching on and off site, with students able to access learning at a time, in a place, and with a device that best suited them.
A Focus on Driving Adoption of New Technologies
Driving adoption can typically be one of the biggest challenges when deploying new technology, but COVID-19 meant people were compelled to work remotely.
Northumbria University had to replicate for students the experience of walking into a specialist lab on campus by providing a virtual front end to the physical machines on site that allowed for remote entry. The key to early adoption was providing a straightforward user experience with simple-to-use technology.
A Proactive Approach to Collecting Feedback
People tend to take IT for granted. It’s often seen as utility, and there is an expectation that connectivity will always be there — like electricity or water — and that the experience will be optimal. Often IT services across higher education, further education, and schools only receive feedback when things go wrong. If things are reasonably silent, then the IT is working and users are content.
Northumbria took a more proactive approach and actively sought feedback. All surveys carried out by the university yielded positive results, and despite a few problems in the roll out of the solution (expected in any case) the stats and usage rates suggest the approach was a success. The overall experience has been positive, certainly for the students.
The Perception of IT Has Changed
The last 15 months have made people realise the importance of the IT department and that moving 30,000 students and 3,500 members of staff to remote working at the drop of the hat was a significant challenge. That this was achieved with such positive results is a great credit to the Northumbria team.
People will continue to view universities as a physical campus as we move to the “next normal”. However, COVID-19 has driven the wider adoption of the active blended learning model, which has been around since circa 2016, and the growth of the digital campus both in the UK and internationally. The perception of how learning is delivered has changed, and investment into the digital campus will continue.
The Importance of Managing Stress and Motivation
COVID-19 has been stressful for everyone. For IT teams, it has provided significant additional pressures, with teams often working round the clock, ensuring people have been able to continue learning and working. Seeing the value they were delivering and seeing all staff and students online kept the Northumbria University IT team motivated. The fact that it has been a success is hugely rewarding for everyone involved. Being aligned with colleagues who supported the efforts with training material and were part of the team that drove adoption was also key.
More Benefits of Moving to Cloud
Embracing a hybrid model offered cost benefits and flexibility. It allowed the university to keep physical devices they’d invested in and leverage opportunities in the cloud. It gave them the ability to spin up Azure Virtual Desktop, hosting some applications that run efficiently in the cloud whilst retaining their specialist applications that rely heavily on high GPU processing.
Not all legacy applications run by the Northumbria are suitable for a cloud model so they retained some on premises and reviewed their future cloud migration on a case-by-case basis.
Moving to cloud is getting easier for organisations, and the past year has forced most organisations to establish a remote community. People aren’t as worried about where the apps and data are, as long as they can access them securely, from any location. Being able to deliver an app from where it’s most appropriate has been a big benefit.
One of the main drivers for moving to a centralised cloud delivery model was security, because it provided an enhanced level of protection. Higher education has been subject to significant cyberattacks during COVID, but by implementing their Citrix infrastructure Northumbria was able to eliminate traditional remote desktop solutions, which are a common attack vector.
The student experience as a profit driver
Improving remote access has opened additional new markets to UK universities. Local students can still easily access labs on campus, whilst others — as long as they can access the labs via their desktop — can be a student at the university from anywhere in the world. It’s a true “digital campus”!
Cost Control with Azure Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Citrix
Citrix Autoscale presented huge cost benefits because it allowed the university to scale up and down based on usage levels and to power down Azure infrastructure when it was not needed. This significantly reduced their Azure bill.
A benefit of Azure Virtual Desktop is one gold image. That image is held in the cloud, and, because of their hybrid model, if they lose everything on site, they keep running with the cloud, eliminating the risk of a single point of failure.
What does the future hold for Northumbria University?
- Continued flexibility in how learning is delivered is key for the future. Northumbria will continue to be a campus-based institution, but it will take a long time for things to get back to normal so a “digital campus” is hugely important to enabling both students and staff in the UK and abroad.
- Students will move more to using their own devices, and there is a generation of students starting to come through whose mobile phone is their primary device. Making access and remote working even easier is a priority.
- Making applications more intelligent by presenting the ones that students visit regularly first when they open the portal.
- Thin clients, which are greener and cheaper, will be leveraged more. Students either want to use their own device or use a thin client because it’s easier.
Learn more about how Northumbria University delivers active blended learning in our fireside chat, available now on demand.
