The need to adapt to technology in educational institutions can be seen in two ways - one is to improve the learning experience and the second is to manage internal resources effectively. Technology brings theories to life, enabling students to invest less time in understanding concepts, thus leveraging technology in education enhances the learning experience.

As with others, when the pandemic struck the education sector, the learning curve for in-person classes almost flattened. Digital learning gained increased significance and soon filled class schedules.

According to eLearning industry, students retain up to 60% more information compared to tradition learning methods. These innovations promise a future for the use of technology to facilitate learning, known as ed-tech, even after in-class teaching returns.

Why your educational institution's IT team needs a proactive network monitoring solution

Proactive network monitoring at educational institutions ensures:

Network Monitoring software - ManageEngine OpManager
  • Peak availability of the campus network, including the network devices and learning portal with limited downtime incidents.
  • High performance of the campus network with a seamless learning experience.
  • Advanced network troubleshooting with continuous threat detection.
  • Deep network visualization giving complete visibility into the network.
  • Secured campus infrastructure with effective management of student, faculty, and administrator records.
  • Compliance management utilizing established sector protocols.
  • Student-staff collaboration and remote learning experiences are improved through efficiently managed distributed networks.
  • Role-based access to personal records, learning portals, and curriculum.

A good network monitoring tool tailors a holistic learning experience with automated administrative management.

How IT teams can score touchdowns while monitoring educational institution's network

High availability, optimum performance and scalable storage systems are undeniably the three axioms of a healthy network. This is true for educational institutions as well.

An IT team's primary objective in monitoring an educational institution's network is ensuring a good availability of all the network assets, including all network devices, learning platforms, associated websites, and service portals. Downtime suffocates accessibility to these inter-dependent channels.

Keeping an eye on the performance of various education applications and servers is crucial. A poor user experience places the functioning of your education infrastructure in crisis.

The next pain point an IT team should address is effectively managing storage systems. Learning resources require potential storage servers, including precise capacity planning, to help servers function effectively. Online classes or ed-tech based smart, in-person classes, the educational content stored on these platforms should be protected against all odds. Preserving the student-faculty database and securing it is fundamental for an educational institution.

A feature-rich network monitoring tool ensures monitoring schools, colleges and universities is a cakewalk for the network administrators.

Metrics that IT teams in educational institutions should consider

Effective network monitoring software establishes harmony in the network, with seamless functioning of all the network components.

 
Availability

Availability monitoring helps track devices whether they are running or experiencing downtime, which helps IT administrators better understand the status of the network. With schools and universities supporting distant education, continuous monitoring ensures all the network assets are up and running, always.

 
Storage

Proactively monitoring storage systems helps your organization plan capacity effectively. Proper planning ensures sufficient rationing of resources for seamless network performance. An overflowing storage can cause your device to freeze and eventually loss of data.

 
Network traffic

Analyzing the campus bandwidth is necessary because it helps detect rogue devices, which is especially crucial during online classes and exams. A sudden spike in network traffic can indicate a hacking attempt. Proactive network traffic monitoring is essential if your institution has migrated to ed-tech completely.

 
Hardware health

Healthy hardware provides good network performance. It's vital to monitor hardware devices regularly to detect fluctuating voltage or an overheated CPU that might indicate a problem.

 
VoIP and Jitter

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a voice call made through an Internet Protocol. Jitter is the time delay in data transmission between the source and destination device. Proactively monitoring VoIP ensures less jitter. Jitter is a key metric to control as it can hinder your video and voice clarity during an online class session.

 

Latency

A delay between a network request and a response results in a poor user experience, especially during online classes.

Challenges educational settings face while monitoring their IT

With the world migrating to better technologies to improve the learning experience, monitoring the network of educational settings based on ed-tech has become more challenging. An effective network monitoring tool adapts itself to the evolving technologies.

Here are a few challenges network administrators face while monitoring their IT:
 
Performance

Network downtime or poor performance can negatively impact educational institutions which are dependent on technology to achieve automated internal management. Failing to raise an internal request, or being unable to access a learning channel, might result in a poor user experience.

 
Capacity planning

Poor capacity planning might result in overflowing servers. Servers form the basis of a campus network as they are used to store data of all streams, educational or people databases. A loss of this data damages an institution's reputation.

 
Adhering to compliance

Policies like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the GDPR help educational institution protect students' personal information. Not complying with these regulations, or not ensuring licenses are updated, can cost your institution more than you imagine—in terms of capital and reputation.

 
Distributed network

Online education is the new way of learning, and students are not confined to a particular network radius. A network monitoring tool that can manage networks distributed across the globe with a central probe guarantees an uninterrupted learning experience—anywhere, anytime!

 
Greater network visibility

Achieving greater visibility is challenging, but can be resolved with a tool that provides multiple visualization options.This enables administrators to visualize effectively and manage the network.

Unify your IT management with OpManager

ManageEngine OpManager is an efficient network monitoring solution that simplifies the Herculean task of monitoring by providing a comprehensible set of features. Today's educational settings utilize more technology than in the past. New devices emerge to enhance the learning and teaching experience, thereby complicating the monitoring practice. With OpManager, any device connected to network through an IP address can be monitored.

OpManager provides what you need to monitor your educational institution.

  • Quickly discover all the devices present in the environment, in the click of a button. Intelligent discovery options help automate and schedule discovery. All the devices discovered are listed in the inventory section.
  • Immediately utilize pre-configured monitors to track devices in your network, including switches, routers, monitors, firewalls, servers, storage devices, VMs, printers, load balancers and others. OpManager leverages advanced capabilities like AI and ML so monitoring is smart and easy.
  • Promptly identify network choke points and quickly notify network administrators with smartly color coded alarms. OpManager's high-level automation allows you to set multilevel thresholds and helps resolve network faults before they affect the end users.
  • In a glimpse, visualize your entire network infrastructure clearly. Your IT team can leverage multiple visualization techniques from network maps, Layer2 maps, category-based device maps, to 3D rack and floor views.
  • Improve the efficiency of your ed-tech platform utilizing OpManager's automated Workflows that execute preset instructions that eliminate manual interventions.
  • Generate more than 100 high-impact reports with OpManager's Reports option, that provides comprehensive insights from generated data.
  • Optimize your campus network performance by monitoring the network bandwidth and traffic pattern by drilling down to the interface level.
  • Maximize your productivity utilizing OpManager's intuitive dashboard with high level customization that helps you create a dashboard featuring more than 200 readjustable performance widgets.
  • The extensive multi-vendor competency supports over 450 vendors and has over 11,000 device templates. What if your devices don't match the existing template? No worries, clone the template from the closest clone and create your own device template.
  • Benefit from transparent, affordable pricing that ensures OpManager is the all-in-one network monitoring software every network administrator is looking for.

How does OpManager help your network stay compliant?

Not adhering to industry-specific data privacy and protection policies might have negative impacts on the organization, leading to loss of reputation and customers. Policies like FERPA and the GDPR are framed to protect the personal information of students.

ManageEngine Network Configuration Manager, a seamless integration of OpManager, helps your network achieve domain-specific compliance. Network Configuration Manager allows you to create own policies meeting the compliance requirements. Be able to provide role-based access to people records, learning portals and curriculum.

Also integrate ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer to analyze the network traffic and ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer to improve the overall firewall performance.

Customer reviews

OpManager

OpManager - 10 Steps Ahead Of The Competition, One Step Away From Being Unequalled.

- Network Services Manager, Government Organization

Review Role: Infrastructure and Operations Company Size: Gov't/PS/ED 5,000 - 50,000 Employees

"I have a long-standing relationship with ManageEngine. OpManager has always missed one or two features that would make it truly the best tool on the market, but over it is the most comprehensive and easy to use the product on the market."

OpManager

Easy Implementation, Excellent Support & Lower Cost Tool

- Team Lead, IT Service Industry

Review Role: Infrastructure and Operations Company Size: 500M - 1B USD

"We have been using OpManager since 2011 and our overall experience has been excellent. The tool plays a vital role in providing the value to our organisation and to the customers we are supporting. The support is excellent and staff takes full responsibilities in resolving the issues. Innovation is never stopping and clearly visible with newer versions"

OpManager

Easy Implementation With A Feature Rich Catalogue, Support Has Some Room For Improvement

- NOC Manager in IT Service Industry

Review Role: Program and Portfolio Management Company Size: 500M - 1B USD

"The vendor has been supporting during the implementation & POC phases providing trial licenses. Feature requests and feedback is usually acted upon swiftly. There was sufficient vendor support during the implementation phase. After deployment, the support is more than adequate, where the vendor could make some improvements."

OpManager

Great Monitoring Tool

- CIO in Finance Industry

Review Role: CIO Company Size: 1B - 3BUSD

"Manage Engine provides a suite of tools that have made improvements to the availability of our internal applications. From monitoring, management and alerting, we have been able to peak performance within our data center."

OpManager

Simple Implementation, Easy To Use. Very Intuitive.

- Principal Engineer in IT Services

Review Role: Enterprise Architecture and Technology Innovation Company Size: 250M - 500M USD

"Manage Engine support was helpful and responsive to all our queries"

 
 
 

Case Studies - OpManager

OpManager
Thorp Reed & Armstrong

Industry: Government

Randy S. Hollaway from Thorp Reed & Armstrong relies on OpManager for prompt alerts and reports.

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Hinduja Global Solutions saves $3million a year using OpManager

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Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS) is an Indian business process management (BPM) organization headquartered in Bangalore and part of the Hinduja Group. HGS combines technology-powered automation, analytics, and digital services focusing on back office process.

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USA-Based Healthcare Organization Monitor's Network Devices Using OpManager and Network Configuration Manager

Industry: Healthcare

One of the largest radiology groups in the nation, with a team of more than 200 board-certified radiologists, provides more than 50 hospital and specialty clinic partners with on-site radiology coverage and interpretations.

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Netherlands-based real estate data company avoids system downtime using OpManager and Firewall Analyzer

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Global news and media company

Industry: Telecommunication and Media

Bonita uses OpManager to monitor their network infrastructure and clear bottlenecks.

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