64 | FOCUS | EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
Offer Holder
Current Student Retention
Application
Alumni
Enquiries
End-to-End Reporting
Two-way data integration
UNIVERSITY SYSTEMS
Financial Systems
Student Housing
Reporting System
Library Database
ABOVE: Hobson's Radius system is scheduled for launch in September 2014
integrate with other, non-Banner or Ellucian systems. Ellucian’s offering consolidates a
wealth of functions which, in a previous era, would have been exclusively serviced by discrete software packages. These include document annotation, web rendering of 250 different file formats, image clean-up and automatic filing – all of which help to reduce dependence on physical media. The gateway to BDM’s vast repositories – its search engine – has been carefully engineered to help users locate specific records. Catering for full-text indexed searches, in conjunction with exclusion, phrase and thesaurus-based navigation, the portal can even, with the addition of an ‘OCR’ server module, examine text found in scanned images. “This notable feature allows users to select areas of an image document, or entire image documents, and convert imaged text into textual data associated with the document,” explains Brobyn. “This text can then be copied and pasted into other applications by users with appropriate permissions”. One of the most recent additions to
Student Record System
“Every university wants to ensure students feel they are receiving value, that they graduate, go on to complete the NSS favourably, become engaged alumni and an advocate”
the BDM suite of applications is Banner Document Retention (BDR). This has been designed, Brobyn says, to help HEIs with their data management, and ensure that unnecessary records are discarded in timely fashion. “Over the years, an institution’s documentation mounts up, taking up storage space,” she rationalises. “Institutions might be legally bound to only store certain types of documents for a certain period of time.” By using data and metadata, the system can help to safeguard against manual purges, whilst identifying and punctually deleting superfluous archive in accordance with organisational policy. Whereas some of a university’s
communications need to be carefully preserved, in shared spaces, there’s a need for more rapidly delivered, ephemeral content. Such information is often presented via an HEI’s own network of video display terminals, which can exhibit graphic and video content across different parts of campus. One way of ‘going large’ in this medium – to impressive effect – is using an interactive video wall. Prysm is a US-based firm which has
supplied several such installations to HEIs, including Qatar University. The company champions laser phosphor display technology (LPD) which, it contends, performs far beter than many market comparators. Some of its most notable advantages, the firm’s VP of Sales & Technical Operations, Dana Corey, suggests, are “a 178 degree viewing angle, which enables content to be seen by everyone in the room, and the fact that these systems emit nearly no heat. This makes them ideal for touch interaction and collaboration.” Minimal power consumption, at just 30 wats per LPD tile, makes the units economic in terms of their electricity usage, and Prysm also claim they require no additional cooling infrastructure or ongoing maintenance. “Prysm LPD technology offers complete
flexibility in terms of the shape and design of a video wall,” details Corey. “This scalability allows the installation to be configured to fit the space and use case as it was intended.” Video walls, the VP elaborates, typically consist of multiple screens fited together. A common problem for such arrays is a discernible
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