The pervasive use of technology in our daily lives creates an expectation for applying remote access tools to educational facilities and learning. Rising fuel and commuting costs necessitate more efficient use of our technical tools. Current economics make it incumbent upon colleges and universities to continue to provide students with the best education possible, while minimizing the impact on their budgets and the environment. The City University of New York (CUNY), where more high academic achievers, national award winners and a diverse student population understand the value of a high quality education, is using a tool to meet these requirements: virtual application streaming.
Virtual application streaming provides remote access to sophisticated and often costly proprietary academic software applications. It allows for use of the same tools on the home computer that a student would access in a computer lab on campus.
In size and complexity, with degree and continuing education students totaling nearly 500,000 in 23 campuses across New York City, the university is without question a demanding environment for a virtual application streaming proof of concept. Serving so many people with individualized priorities, goals, and educational and scheduling needs is a tall task, according to Brian Cohen, CUNY's CIO and associate vice chancellor for technology.
Cohen's forward thinking led to piloting the use of virtual application streaming. Testing this new technology required CUNY to fully comprehend IT and user requirements. At a minimum, the technology had to do the following:
After examining IT, student and faculty needs, it was clear that busy schedules required a technology with maximum flexibility, allowing students to integrate study into daily activities. Virtual application streaming enables remote access to school licensed software from individually owned devices.
"About 97 percent [of students] have a PC at home or at work and have access to broadband Internet services," Cohen said. "They have the tools they need to utilize more technology. So our goal is to give them more opportunities to use those tools. Virtual application streaming reduces a student's need to use our campus labs."
In September 2008, CUNY introduced the Virtual Application Streaming Pilot Project to 143 students and six faculty members, allowing them access to campus software from anywhere -- instantaneously -- via Internet. Without this technology, students faced either purchasing an expensive application for installation on a laptop or home computer, or commuting to campus and utilizing a university computer with the software already installed. In the pilot project, CUNY provided multi-user software licenses, making the streamed applications free to students and faculty for the duration of a course.
James Haggard, CUNY's Deputy CIO for Strategic Initiatives, is pleased with the results of this pilot and defines success as minimizing and/or removing barriers to ensure successful student outcomes.
"We met our objective of making tools available online using remote access," he said. "The student derives the same access to information as if he or she were sitting on campus."
Cohen added that there have been few, if any, calls to the IT's help desk, and the experience has been positive for students, faculty and IT staff.
Additionally, virtual application streaming technology offers financial benefits to the university because it eliminates the need for additional hardware investment. Unlike server-based computing, application streaming uses the computing power of the user's computer. The virtualized software also separates the application from the user's operating system, eliminating software conflicts.
CUNY is dedicated to promoting sustainability, and virtual application streaming will assist the institution in reducing its students' carbon footprint.
There are two components to the technology: application virtualization and application streaming. The virtualization piece allows CUNY to run applications on remote computers in a way that will not interfere with programs existing on the user's operating system. The software is delivered in a wrapper -- a type of coding -- that decreases CUNY's concerns for unexpected problems on the user's computer. This also allows CUNY to collectively update every user's version of the software, and it gives the university the ability to recall the software when the user has completed a course.
The streaming aspect encompasses the way in which the program is delivered. After users log into a Web site, they can view a list of accessible applications and begin streaming the software to their devices, much like video streaming.
Haggard described streaming the application to his computer: "It took about 35-40 seconds for the application to launch and present its first screen."
The program begins executing as soon as the stream hits the laptop, and users do not have to wait for the entire multiple-gigabyte application to arrive. On first launch, it can take longer to initiate the streamed application compared to the local hard drive; however, once cached on the user's hard drive, subsequent launches are comparable to launching a traditionally installed program.
By streaming applications to remote computers, CUNY is leveling the playing field between campus-based and online courses for application access. Although the pilot is working specifically with the Online Baccalaureate program, future use of the technology could extend to students taking classroom courses, granting them access to campus-based applications from home or other locations.
So how much did it cost CUNY to implement such a mobile technology? The IT department eliminated some hardware costs; but how does CUNY or other universities reduce the cost of delivering software to hundreds of students and faculty members?
"It's become harder to license products," Cohen said. "The software vendor model is extremely expensive, and, quite frankly, it's an impossible model for higher education to sustain."
Many software vendors don't allow home usage of university-owned products, nor do they allow concurrent use of one license. Some vendors require one license for every device, making software a costly expense. However, Haggard suggests that large universities may be able to take advantage of their purchasing power to negotiate with vendors for shared network licenses and concurrent-user models.
"Most software vendors offer special programs for educational use," Haggard said.
For the Virtual Application Streaming Pilot Project, CUNY used the statistical analysis software SPSS. The software came bundled with a textbook for the course. This was convenient for the pilot because it eliminated licensing issues.
"The whole point of virtual application streaming is to be able to deliver the necessary application and manage the licenses ourselves," Haggard said.
At the end of the semester, the pilot participants will provide the university with feedback from their application streaming experiences. CUNY expects to add more students, faculty and applications to future phases of the project -- including programs such as Mathematica, a mathematical modeling application, and Dreamweaver, a tool used for Web site graphic design.
"Success is measured by the perspectives of the students and faculty," Cohen said. "Our goal is to improve access to instructional applications and provide a positive experience."
By providing virtual application streaming, CUNY is offering improved curricular access, which gives students more options for a successful educational career.
"Many of our students are first-generation college students," Haggard said. "They are people who have enormous demands outside of the university. Many of them are raising families and they have jobs. So if we can in some way help make it easier for them to do their course work while they're balancing all those other competing life needs, then that's a success too."
As the demand for distance learning becomes more imperative, virtual application streaming will be a necessity for universities, particularly commuter campuses like CUNY.
"Virtual application streaming is an opportunity that many of us are going to value in the next several years," Cohen said.
"This is a technology that helps as we're moving toward more virtual components in many of our classes," Haggard said. "It allows us to focus our campus resources on enhancing or optimizing our technology goals for students, faculty and staff."
CUNY, mindful of its tradition of quality and value, is emerging today as a technological leader that embraces innovation and its promises for a better tomorrow.
*This story is from Converge magazine's Fall 2008 issue.
