I heard about the fact that Deakin was using this technology at a Swinburne meeting focused on learning and teaching resources in the context of considering (lack of) lecture attendance as an important indicator of potential student disengagement and attrition … if you can track where people are, you can track their attendance at class and their use of library and other facilities. While I can see how this might be a useful thing to do, it is sobering to think about the ethical issues that would be raised in terms of tracking and identifying people without their explicit consent if we wanted to do it in a research context … apparently it is perfectly okay to use “big data” for business purposes in order to reduce attrition.
Proximity services based on Cisco technology.
“Our dependency on the network has increased to a point of criticality.
With these high-end user mobility requirements, we need rich contextual information from the network… tracking 55,000 students, 10,000 staff, the three-to-five devices they have. We need information on where they go, where they dwell, what they do differently on any particular device,” he added.
Hyperlocation is a big focus for the vendor at this year’s Cisco Live. Deakin’s hyperlocation project began with a prototype at the university library, followed by the current pilot, which has been running for four months. The team will then put together an enterprise business case with the aim of a full rollout in the latter half of this year.
Lynn Warneke, director of channels and platforms at Deakin, said the university wanted to use technology in a way that is “truly smart but also truly useful”. The university aims to be “the premiere university in Australia driving the digital frontier,” she added.
Warneke pointed out some further use cases for the proximity project. “We are adding context to location. Students are able – if they opt in, of course – to determine the location of their Deakin study group on campus.”
The technology can also take advantage of geo-fencing, triggering notifications as users move around the university campus, she added.
Source: Deakin pilots Cisco hyperlocation with Dimension Data’s help
