Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 58 | Page 76

FINAL WORD to overcome challenging coverage issues in dense centres and indoor environments .
Enabling a wide range of use cases and applications
Higher education institutions have diverse needs that require campus-wide communications . There are main use cases that are driving their requirements .
First , students and faculty members will need affordable high-speed Internet access for accessing e-learning and digital productivity tools on their mobile devices . But also , classrooms and auditoriums can be equipped with services such as smart boards , smart podiums or smart lighting that require connectivity for data sharing and control .
Remote learning may be enriched with augmented and virtual reality ( AR / VR ) classrooms that could be accessed from anywhere in the world – with teachers and / or classrooms located on or off campus . Researchers will benefit from state-of-the-art wireless communications in their laboratories to experiment with Industry 4.0 technologies and to create a ‘ living lab ’ to explore business- and mission-critical IoT applications for different industries .
Next , there are a large number of network-enabled opportunities to make the higher-education campuses safer and more liveable for students , teachers , operations staff and visitors . Think , e . g ., of deploying ( drone- or robot-based ) surveillance cameras , smoke sensors , fever detection with thermal cameras , emergency call buttons and pushto-talk and push-to-video group communication applications , as well as using connected digital billboards to spread general information and emergency announcements .
And finally , campus operations and facility management could be transformed through building automation , environmental control systems , and data from IoT sensors . Reliable broadband coverage and connectivity can also help institutions develop new campus-wide logistics systems using automated guided vehicles ( AGVs ).
As a conclusion , education digitalisation is becoming a necessity especially with distant learning imposed by the pandemic era that we live today . Educational institutions as well as all the ecosystem players in the education industry will need to embrace these radical changes and digitally transform their infrastructure and operations . p
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