Internet of Things in Higher Education: A Study on Future Learning

The internet of things (IoT) is all about dealing without any interaction of human – to – human. In this digital world transferring data through the network has reduced human work efficiency and there is a big concern about privacy and security. Although the world is now undoubtedly dependent on  IoT, even educational systems have a great impact on this.

Now researchers developed more wireless systems that will consume only less power and can be integrated into every type of device available. Technology is being highly supportive of educational institutions in order to improve the learning experiences of students and teachers can gain real-time performance of students. It has its own potential to bring value to higher educational institutions.

The IoT systems are totally different from traditional IT systems. The new system should contain a large number of devices with high variability, this is considered as a drawback. Cisco predicted that by the end of 2020, 50 billion devices will be connected to the internet.

Digital Campus:

The digital campus is a wonderful opportunity for students where they can get all the information with just one button push away. This digital campus is providing students with a wireless network that will play a vital role and mainly designed to meet the new technology of modern universities. This internet of things is about to change the reforms of teaching techniques, where students can learn from anywhere on the campus, they can be in sports venues or restaurants.

Why Digital Campus?

  • It is going to be our near future
  • Higher educational institutions are constantly working to lead the progress on IoT technologies combining with business models and ethics.
  • It also develops to change in society including higher educational institutions.

Personalized learning platform:

This system creates and gives space for personalized learning, where students, educators, and researchers are connected to a personal device. Universities give students the choice to finish projects online rather than going to the library, with the guidance of a tutor online with multiple sources available they can collaborate on projects in real-time. Students can check the availability of the lab or library before they check-in, it saves time. And they can monitor the student’s activities and assist personalized study plans based on their ability which is tailor-made for individual students. Here are tips on how to nurture creativity in a child.

Some concepts of Personalized learning platform:

  • Smarter sensors are in use to detect whether students are distracting from the study or not and it provides alternative scenarios to improve learning.
  • Intelligent tutoring system that provides exact feedback about students’ learning ability.
  • The high variety of devices is in use for numerous different tasks including reading a heart rate, sensing the air quality and video monitoring space.
  • Apart from monitoring the students, it ensures a highest level of safety by monitoring their whole surroundings.

Risk Factor in IoT:

IoT has lots of benefits, even though it has many risk factors residing in it.

  • Universities are busy setting up and experimenting with the Internet of things, at the same time they should ensure their security systems are strong and protected.
  • No one cannot disagree with the fact that IT devices have improved a lot in the past year, by that hackers also developed which means universities cannot ignore the threats.
  • The medical devices can be hacked, by drones, videos are being ambushed and hacked, and smart meters are used to steal information.

By highlighting these issues faced by the management who set up IoT they have to find a way to manage these types of problems.

  • People are still figuring out and facing difficulties to understand the concept of traditional IT systems and IoT, that need to be discussed.
  • Lack of language is a bigger issue that should be considered because IoT does not have a conceptual framework.
  • It challenges the difficulty of identifying the categories of devices that can be highly helpful in developing risk management approaches.

Other common risk factors are

  • Safety
  • They tend to face financial loss
  • Reputation damage
  • Cope up with the business competitions
  • Technology challenges and many more for the institutions

As the number of nodes increases, growing business environments on higher education institutions are eventually becoming complex. In this, the worst case is institutions considering loT systems are managed but actually it is not. They are still learning to manage and protect against hackers. This value of risk will not be realized without thoughtful implementation.

A radiating future:

With all hopes and dreams, students enter the institutions. So it is an underlying responsibility for universities to create a great future for them and that implements the future nation. The Internet of things will provide great technology to the students and enhance their learning experiences. With this advancement of technology, they can build a smarter plan with a good research team and design a safer campus. Apart from all the risk factors, there are many advantages with this IoT technology, even though many of the risk factors can be avoided with our small precautionary steps, so be aware of the things and make use of the Technology to the maximum, it’s really a smarter people approach.

Author
Kalaivani is a content strategist of SchoolBasix, who research on latest topics what the education industry speaks about. Specializes in handling blogs that potential means of marketing and circulating across social media and holds a master's degree in marketing.