Huawei, along with Southern Cross University (SCU), is looking at the trends and challenges shaping the future of education in Australia and the ICT solutions that fit into this market.
The two-day 2015 Education Summit held in the Gold Coast, Australia, focused on ‘Building a Better Connect Education' and served as a key discussion forum for addressing education in the digital age.
More than 150 people were in attendance, including governors of the Department of Education and Training in Queensland, representatives from senior industry analysts from IDC, senior representatives of Huawei's partners, and customers from the education industry - such as Peking University and Blackboard, as well as experts and academia specialised in digital education from around the world.
"Information technology is transforming the way we teach, learn and administer in the education world,” says Dong Wu, Huawei vice president of enterprise network solution sales department Enterprise Business Group.
“At Huawei, we are committed to collaborating with customers and partners in the industry to develop the intelligent, agile and innovative ICT architecture needed to create better connected education,” he says.
In line with its continued focus on ICT infrastructure innovations, Huawei says it's committed to working with partners and customers to provide primary education institutions, universities and vocational schools with innovative ICT solutions, including agile campus, education cloud and smart classroom products and services.
At present, Huawei has assisted hundreds of schools in building smart information systems and agile service channels.
Key institutions using Huawei ICT solutions include Imperial College London, Newcastle University, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Southern Cross University and Northern Michigan University.
When referring to a new network built in collaboration with Huawei at SCU, vice chancellor professor Peter Lee says, "SCU is a multi-campus institution. We had a need to update our network facilities to meet the expectations of students, including the use of mobile devices on campus, as well as the capacity to video-conference across our campuses.
“With Huawei, SCU will build an agile and reliable network to provide teachers and students with network access anytime and anywhere.
“High-speed internet connectivity and data transmission will also enhance daily operations and management. The advanced network infrastructure will be an essential part of driving the future development of SCU."
Sue Bryant, Huawei South Pacific director of ICT solutions marketing, says, "Huawei's smart campus solution is designed to integrate a variety of education resources on campuses through an agile network that can be easily customised to cater for different needs.
“The solution allows customers to improve the reliability and stability of their information systems and mitigate network operation and maintenance pressure - and by extension costs - by leveraging virtualisation management.
“We expect these ICT technologies to drastically improve learning efficiency and to help drive the transformation of the whole industry,” she says.
Massimiliano Claps, IDC EMEA head of government, healthcare and education research, says, "Traditional teaching and learning approaches are being replaced by hybrid and diverse learning methods where students are at the centre of the learning process.
“Teachers are no longer just lecturers and learning is no longer confined to classrooms. With digital transformation, personalised online learning is gaining greater momentum.