Smart Campus E-Readiness

A Framework for Cyberspace Learning Strategic Management

Sayed Hadi Sadeghi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000574814
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

This book discusses the concept of the smart campus and e-learning practice in tertiary education, showing the relevance of the smart campus to the current learning environment. It provides a pedagogical framework for good practice in smart university campuses.

The book outlines the interdisciplinary concept of the smart campus and draws on technology, education, and learning sciences to show how the smart campus can best work. It examines e-practice assessment in three different contexts, namely the United States, Australia, and Iran, from the perspective of administrators, faculty members, and students. Using this international comparative analysis, the book determines the existing advantages and disadvantages of existing e-learning systems. It offers a framework for researchers and developers to accelerate and assess the readiness of current campuses to optimize teaching, learning, and research at the university.

This highly topical book will be essential reading for researchers, scholars, and post-graduate students in the fields of educational technology, digital education, higher education, and e-learning. It will also be useful for higher education instructors and university administrators to understand how smart campus knowledge can be integrated with other learning and teaching experiences.

Chapter 1An Introduction to Smart Campuses

DOI: 10.4324/9781003198826-1

Introduction

As more and more advanced teaching technologies are being introduced, the construction of smart campus has become the focal point in modern higher education reform. Technologies in information and communication technologies (ICT), artificial intelligence (AI), smart devices, and the like play a key role in optimizing the teaching environment of universities, the use of teaching resources, and the flexibility of education. To capitalize on scientific and technological advancements, the notion of smart campus has been introduced, by means of which a good number of universities have started to improve the quality of educational services, reduce service costs, and make management more efficient (West, 2012). Accordingly, more institutions and agencies are taking an interest in a more scientific, smart, and efficient construction of advanced campuses.

People's lifestyles and work habits, as well as learning methods, have all changed dramatically as a result of technological advancements. The steady transformation of the learning environment, as well as the growing desire for individualized and adaptable learning, has triggered education reform and development. Smart campus, being the most advanced version of a smart education system, has become a reality and is gaining popularity around the world. Smart campuses provide citizens with a smart learning environment that helps them become smart workers, making them an important part of the smart city framework (Liu, Huang, & Wosinski, 2017). There is a compelling need to conduct active research and have a thorough grasp of the smart campus and its qualities in such a rapidly evolving environment. According to dictionaries, the phrase “smart” refers to someone who is quite good at learning new things, making wise decisions, and reacting quickly to difficulties. When a system can provide services autonomously in response to changing customer demand, it is said to be “smart” (Kwok, 2015). The smart campus has been generally recognized as the smart form of the educational system in today's education systems (Valks, Arkesteijn, Koutamanis, & den Heijer, 2021).

The smart university campus efforts cover a wide range of topics, but the major focus is on integrating a new set of intelligent services into the campus to replace outdated manual services. Smart University Campus will create a new ubiquitous computer and communication field that will drastically alter people's lives by delivering smart technologies enabled systems and gadgets that can respond quickly to changes and conditions without human intervention, as well as learn from them.

On the other hand, the constant rise of the university population necessitates the physical and financial expansion of university campuses in order to meet the needs of their students (Sundorph & Mosseri-Marlio, 2016). To meet these objectives, a systematic strategy must be established that allows students to live in an atmosphere where global issues such as sustainability are highlighted. The development of learning is hampered on university campuses that lack a defined plan, which includes standards and policies that allow for proper management of economic, social, and environmental resources. To address these issues, university campuses are looking for ICT-enabled solutions. The assumption is that university campuses have their own computer infrastructures that enable them to generate and store vast amounts of data. Having a platform that integrates all of the technologies responsible for collecting and analyzing data in a private cloud environment aids in the management of learning and the interaction of university students with technology. This approach allows the university members to interact with the environment and improve their situations in terms of comfort, safety, and decision-making, in addition to ensuring improvement in educational processes. As such, it is vital to “unify all the data obtained from academic systems, financial systems, enterprise resource planning, learning management systems, security systems, sensor systems and actuators, among others” (Villegas-Ch, Palacios-Pacheco, & Luján-Mora, 2019, p. 33).

In short, the notion of smart campus is of paramount importance in educational administration since it enhances the interaction of students, instructors, and managers in an efficient environment. It creates relaxing surroundings in which each individual's needs are met in a unique way based on a projection of their preferences. This ecosystem connects concepts, technology, data, and people to ensure a well-informed society where new technology trends ensure the advancement of learning.

Because the phrase smart campus attracts professionals and academics from a wide range of fields, and because technology is increasingly affecting all aspects of life, it is becoming increasingly likely that the smart campus will emerge to implement the future vision of smart cities. Therefore, it is critical to have a clear understanding of what a smart campus is as a first step toward realizing this vision. In the following section, various definitions of smart campus are provided together with a brief look at its constituents.

Smart Campus Definition

Future learning environments, smart classrooms, learning spaces, smart campuses, technology-enhanced learning, and other words are related to smart learning environments in that they all relate to using information technology to create a personalized and adaptive learning environment for learners. Smart learning environments, indeed, integrate and combine numerous technologies, including intelligent tutoring, learning analytics, educational data mining, adaptive learning, and personalized learning (Liu et al., 2017).

The term “smart” is frequently used to characterize an object's ability to display the intelligence that has been implanted in it. The word “smart” is collocated with the phone to demonstrate its intelligence in supporting a variety of activities or everyday human life by means of numerous services. The smart concept is evolving and now encompasses not only a single object but also broader aspects of human life, such as smart cities, smart campuses, smart grids, and so on.

Smart campus is a new trend in higher education that allows schools to merge smart technologies with physical infrastructure to improve services, decision-making, and campus sustainability, among other things (Min-Allah & Alrashed, 2020). The term “smart campus” generally refers to a new way of thinking about a holistic intelligent campus environment that includes, but is not limited to, various themes of campus intelligence, for example, holistic e-learning, social networking, and communications for work collaboration, green and ICT sustainability with intelligent sensor management systems, protective and preventative health care, smart building management with automated security control and surveillance, and visible campus governance and reporting (Kwok, 2015). Digital campuses are the foundation for smart campuses (Yu, Zhang, Pan, Wang, & Xiao, 2021). Smart campuses, in comparison to traditional digital campuses, provide services in a timely manner, eliminate effort, and lower operational expenses. The term “smart campus” also refers to an institution's use of advanced technology to autonomously regulate and monitor campus facilities while also providing high-quality services to the campus community, which includes students and staff. This improves the campus's efficiency and reactivity, as well as decision-making, space use, and student experience (Abuarqoub et al., 2017). The construction of smart campuses primarily entails key technologies, for example, learning situation identification and environment awareness, campus mobile interconnection, social networking, learning analytics technology, and technology for digital resource organization and sharing (Huang, Zhang, Hu, & Yang, 2012a, b).

The smart campus market is driven by the variety of services provided to various customers, as well as the inherent requirement for reducing costs while maintaining high quality. The influence of given services is felt on campus not just in terms of academics but also in terms of social, financial, and environmental factors. A number of definitions of a smart campus have been reported in the literature, with three separate components serving as essential characteristics: Personalized services, information services, and environmental platforms. As a result, the creation of a smart campus is an unavoidable trend in the development of a digital campus, and it necessitates the integration of all of these aspects.

Mishalani, McCord, and Goel (2011) described a smart campus as an intelligent and smart environment of teaching, learning, and living that is built on Internet technology and application services; thus, it includes teaching, research, management, and campus life. This is also consistent with Yu, Liang, Xu, Yang, and Guo's (2011) definition of a smart campus as the integration of applications on the basis of the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to support campus information acquisition, sharing, and services so as to promote the intelligence process of teaching, scientific research, and services. On the basis of these definitions, it is clear th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 An Introduction to Smart Campuses
• 2 Models of Smart Campus and Its Applications
• 3 Smart Learning and E-Practice
• 4 Research Methodology for Case-Based Educational Readiness in USA, Australia, and Iran
• 5 Case-Based Educational Readiness Assessment in United States, Australia, and Iran's Universities
• 6 Case-Based Organizational Readiness Assessment in United States, Australia, and Iran's Universities
• 7 Case-Based Technological Readiness Assessment in United States, Australia, and Iran's Universities
• 8 Case-Based Performance Appraisal Assessment in United States, Australia, and Iran's Universities
• 9 Conclusion
• Index