Background

Education institutions deliver a vast array of services to students beyond their core mission of teaching and learning, from academic, health and emotional support to counseling have historically been challenged to provide the vast array of student services they need to deliver in a timely, high quality and cost-effective manner. Among the reasons for this are the difficulty in finding the specialists they need to deliver the services, the cost of those specialists, and the logistical challenges of delivering those services to all students. Historically these services have been delivered mostly, if not exclusively, on campus. As with teaching and learning, the pandemic forced institutions to rapidly adopt virtual delivery of these services. Many struggled with this shift, leading to a significant drop in service delivery and student engagement.

Silver lining

In spite of these challenges, institutions found that the shift to virtual delivery of services unlocked benefits that they wish to maintain permanently:

• Flexible delivery: Both service providers and students enjoyed the flexibility of meeting online due to ease of scheduling and time savings.
• Faster issue resolution: The ability to meet online allowed services to be delivered immediately.
• Higher quality: The ability to hire top service providers regardless of location expanded access to high quality provides
• Cost savings – Moving to virtual delivery allowed institutions to share resources across departments (HE) or districts (K12) that created scale, increased resource utilization and reduced costs.
• Expanded access – Shared service models allowed institutions to provide a wider array of high quality services that they could not previously manage or afford.

The future of services is hybrid!

Now that institutions have seen the benefits of delivering services remotely, they must make hybrid service delivery the standard to meet the needs and preferences of students, parents, faculty and staff. Campus leaders need to understand that not all solutions in this space are equivalent and that delivering a high-quality experience is critical to success. Cisco has both the deep portfolio of solutions to meet this high standard, along with deep experience in education that we bring to our customers every day.

Learn more about hybrid learning environments and all Cisco is doing to create an inclusive future of learning for all.

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