For some in higher education the pandemic did not really start something new in higher educational cloud structure or how classrooms of the future would look like.
Paul Padley, Vice President for IT & CIO, at Rice University talked about how higher education was already on the road for remote or dual delivery schooling at an online event entitled Reimagining Higher Education Technology to Meet Post-Pandemic Imperatives hosted by Fed Insider.
“I think cloud strategy was already the path we were on. What happened was, everything got accelerated. For example, our learning management systems were sitting in the cloud already anyway. What we did do for example, is buy a lot more storage for videos to be hosted in the cloud. I didn’t see the pandemic starting anything new. What I saw the pandemic doing was accelerating a lot of transitions,” said Padley.
Padley also went on to describe how the needs for quick and accessible master’s programs have also pushed the need and uses of cloud and online technologies for those programs.
“The other place where we’ve seen tremendous growth is in professional master’s programs, for these people who have degrees that are working in industry, and then they’re coming back and trying to upskill and to obtain professional master’s degrees in an online environment. This is something that’s exploding across many campuses and has paved the rode for more cloud infrastructure,” said Padley.
