How Bryant University Teaches with Innovation and Technology

By Microsoft in Business Team

September 29, 2017

Tags
Education

Focus on: Empower Employees, Optimize Operations, Engage Customers

Inside the Academic Innovation Center at Bryant University, 12 students sit in a circle, fingers poised above keyboards, heads tilted toward their professor, who has just introduced a guest lecturer via Skype. A thirteenth student, traveling with the school’s basketball team, logs in for the lesson. Afterwards the professor pairs up the students for a team project they’ll work on via collaboration tools in Office 365. She tags another student who is out sick, so that she, too, can complete the lesson.

Founded in 1863, Bryant University is a private institution located in Smithfield, Rhode Island – a town 30 minutes north of Providence. It’s made up of 265 administrative staff and just over 3600 undergraduate and graduate students.

Bryant University is currently ranked as a top ten Regional University by U.S. News and World Report, and its College of Business is ranked third in the country by USA Today. Improving collaboration among its students and faculty has always been a priority, and change is something the school embraces, especially when it comes to technology. From “flipping”– replacing traditional lecture halls with a dynamic innovation center and classrooms, to equipping students and faculty with the digital tools to collaborate across and off campus, their mission is to promote technology for learning and instructional purposes. As director of Academic Computing and Media Services, Phil Lombardi and his staff, in partnership with colleagues from Academic Affairs, help lead and support this transformative campus mission.

Unified solutions for improved collaboration Phil has witnessed the evolution of technology first hand over the two decades he’s been with the university, and works to stay on top of digital trends. Noticing that Bryant students and faculty engaged with a wide variety of digital mediums from Office and Google to iOS, Dropbox, Gmail, and dozens of social media platforms, one of Phil’s goals was to find a solution that would protect university data, improve productivity, and unify each of the mediums they used.

The first step in meeting that goal was to form a group that would be responsible for choosing the right solution. This committee, made up of faculty from the Colleges of Business and Arts & Sciences, Information Services, and students, started their search by looking at the various collaboration tools already in use. While faculty and staff were using Microsoft Office for classrooms, labs, and business operations, the students were in their own environment, using Google apps and other tools.

“Environments are changing,” Phil says. “Office cubicles are out and dynamic office spaces have become more common.” So in collaboration with Academic Affairs and Facilities, the team took an existing classroom with limited use, and transformed it into an innovative space that invites collaboration both within and outside its borders, using virtual collaboration technologies. Within a year this transformed active teaching and learning space became one of the highest utilized classrooms on campus. From there, Bryant University built a circular shaped innovative academic building with moveable pods and advanced technologies, designed for collaboration and engaged teaching and learning. Once this “Innovation Center” was in use, they realized that a unified digital platform would help to bring the entire campus together.

Engaging students and faculty with Office 365
Traditionally, students have had an easier time adapting to digital tools than have faculty and staff. But now that the faculty has seen up close how well the innovation center has worked to engage students, they’ve become more open to the digital platform. “Instead of sitting in a seat listening to a lecture, students are engaged and interacting.” And that’s something educators can get behind. “They’re starting to ask questions about the tools,” Phil says, “and wanting to learn more about them so that they can develop their own innovative approaches with technology to improve academic outcomes.”

Office 365 is also helping off-site users remain connected and freeing teachers and students alike from relying on attendance. Student athletes can stay in the loop, traveling professors can Skype in to teach, and students with health issues can still turn in work. So far, Bryant University has seen great success in unifying the solutions available to their employees and is excited for the collaboration opportunities between students and teachers that this move creates.

Phil and his team have partnered with HR and Academic Affairs, to pilot a program to train employees, and use their advocacy to engage students. “We’re looking to provide advanced MS skills training to any faculty or staff member interested in a particular Office 365 tool, so that they can become a campus recognized Power User of that tool” The idea here is for support to be more community-based, rather than just offering an IT help desk. So, if someone has a question about Skype for Business for example, they can go talk to Joe over in Purchasing on functional use support,” Phil says. It’s a program that adds to the university’s strong sense of community and lets departments become innovators in their operational practices. Their plan is to encourage on-campus facility experts through badging and certificate programs.

While the tools they’ve rolled out have been successful, there are still many tools within the 365 offering that have yet to be turned on. “We have limited resources so we decided to start with some of the basics. We want to be sure we’re prepared and have enough expertise around each tool before we turn them on. Otherwise they just sit stagnant, and if users do try without understanding they might be less likely to try again.”

Equipping the leaders of tomorrow
Bryant University is best known for their business school, so it’s important for the faculty to ensure that every student graduates ready for the business world. “The Microsoft platform is pretty prominent out there,” Phil says. “But companies aren’t just looking to hire graduates knowing office suite applications, they want students to have broader skills, like knowing how to collaborate and think creatively. As educators, the Bryant University faculty is responsible for equipping their students with the right tools and mindsets to excel in a professional environment. Office 365 presents the clear next step for helping students and teachers at Bryant University achieve more. “We want our students to start their careers hitting the ground running,” Phil says.

The Information Services team meets with the student senate technology representative every two weeks for real-time feedback and to continue innovating where it matters most. The feedback they’ve received so far is that the collaboration tools within Office 365 platform go beyond the classroom and are seen important tools to help with student career opportunities. At Bryant University, 94% of students live on campus. With just 3,600, theirs is a small, tight-knit community, so the collaboration tools do more than just improve academics, they also provide enhanced social capabilities and improve outcomes for students and for the learning process.

“We had the methodology, the approach, and the building,” explains Phil. “Marrying the physical and the virtual has given us an integrated, collaborative approach to teaching and learning.”