World University’s Technical Infrastructure
Write a business report based on the following:
A group of private education institutions around the world has come together to form World University. It is a fully online university where lecturers teach online from any of its campuses to others around the world. Many different courses are offered. Students can sign on any time to study. All interactions with staff are online. Students can even choose which country they graduate from. A student who has studied his entire degree from Australia may choose to graduate from World University USA, as an example.
A university of various private education institution have decided to merge together to form a world class university and will be entirely online. Lecturers will be able to teach and interact with students on the e-platform. The institutions have decided to merge so as to offer world class education to students worldwide. The new university named Wold University has tried to include a maximum number of students with the ability to allow them to graduate in the country of choice thus increasing learning flexibility significantly. Besides their large number of tutors worldwide, the range of courses intended to be offered by the university will also increase. They have decided to provide preconfigured laptops and e-books for the students because they are part of the requirements for online learning. The laptops will be loaded with the required software and distributed to the students who have enrolled all over the world.
In addition to the online infrastructure that is managed to address the different needs of the students, the university also will include prominent features regarding the technical aspects of the university. The university will create website where every the management, lecturers, and students will have different portals to interact on the platform. The interactive web platform that is intended to provide by new university will increase user’s traffic toward their website, and this increases the business of university. The university also has tried to adopt with the improvement of technology by developing a mobile application, and this is still going to draw attention from students who are more with mobile technology. The merged World University is trying to use a single platform, for accessing the website and provide joint service for online students too. The university will use a single website to provide service (Bahrami et al., 2012).
For improvement of new World University, the university has managed to improve IT infrastructures especially by upgrading their new website that is developed centrally for all merged institutions and even managed mobile technologies by making their learning classes available within the mobile application. The more concern with the interactivity of developed website is given to improve the experience of students, who visit the site of University.
University’s Plan for Large Student Base
The university is still more interested in deploying their business for large student base and increasing their business profit, with student loyalty scheme. The loyal students who refer new students with fee credit will be rewarded depending on the course they pick. The university has planned to make the fee fair to their students. However, the university has issued notice about the fee may vary depending upon course taken and the rate of student enrolment.
The institutions have seen to be upgraded and able to provide significant online learning resources and facilities for the students. However, the implementation of state plans is challenging for the university to carry on. This causes the university to deal with several challenges especially with the implementation of IT infrastructure of the university. The discussion of issues that are raised with managing IT issues of the university is covered below.
The university’s intention to manage the single website for all merged institutions is seen as to have a mixed effect on learning experience (Hisham, 2015), having both advantages and disadvantages for the university running a single website for different branches of the university.
Easy management of site
With only one site for the university to maintain and organise, the university can do work related to a website without spending more time and effort. With this university has sufficient time to analyse and plan other more critical issues related to the learning processes and which ultimately increases the chance of the university to maximise profit. Thus, managing single website for all different branches is seen with resources needed to manage the site.
Cost of building and managing website is reduced
With development and maintenance of website, the university must register the website and even host the website using a reliable hosting company that increases the uptime of university’s website. Hence, the cost related to registering the website and hosting it is cheaper compared to hosting multiple websites which is expensive enough for the university to pay and thus using single website is beneficial especially with starting a university (Porssa and Mirzazadeh, 2016).
Less time to manage issues within website
With just one website to manage, the university can focus on issues related to only one site and which creates the site up to date with problems faced and students can gain maximum supportive website for choosing the course that they would like to enrol.
Fewer chances of contents duplicate
Advantages of Managing Single Website for Different Branches University
When a university needs to update all the features and service provided by the university using several sites managed by the university, there will be higher chances that contents uploaded by the university to the site could be duplicated and these make no significant impact on improving business profit and useability. However, the resources are misused. This show with single site maintained by university drastically reduces this problem associated with creating duplicate contents in university’s website.
Easier for cross-selling of courses from university
The students who are willing to use the service from the university do not have to search different sites for choosing and selecting courses from the university; this increases the ability of university’s single website to sell more services. Thus the idea to use the single website for different institutions of the university is seen wiser approach with a business perspective.
Higher ranking of page in SERP (search engine result page)
The merged institutions to form one university can have a higher rank in SERP, than when the university intends to use different websites with different branches of the university. This higher ranking of university’s website is always beneficial for a university with business profit, for a large university of students can get informed about the university, and its service and more people are likely to use service from the university itself. With this issue, the university’s motive to maximise profit is seen to be accomplished.
University is unable to get students with geo-target
By university’s plan to adopt a single website for business having advantages to carry and with the addition to adding this some distinct disadvantages are needed to handle by any university. Similarly, merged university cannot properly address the service to different users who are distributed at the different geographical location, and this drastically reduces the clients visiting the website of the university and this is seen as a disadvantage for university’s intended policy to maximise profit.
For site to go down, university loses al the business
With the university having only one site to carry out business plans and activities, this situation can be disappointing when university’s site goes down due to technical issues within hosting university and bugs within a website. When this situation arises, all the learning operations of a university can go down, and university should experience severe loss. Thus this issue is seen a disadvantage for the university when using single website.
Disadvantages of Managing Single Website for Different Branches University
Issues with interactivity of website
The university needs to include different features within their website about the courses available to students, the available range of service use and management of user’s login page and storage and website with interactive interface could only be maintained with internet version of 2.0 (Cossío-Silva et al., 2016). A device that does not support this version cannot use the available interactive user interface of university’s website. Besides this university need a professional programmer to develop a website for university and database maintenance of the university. The university can have an issue with handling of this process of website development, hosting and regularly maintaining.
Issues with tracking loyal students
The university has planned to give extra facilities to loyal students who are constantly referring new students to the university. These are real students of the university who could be trusted by university thus university should also provide an incentive for those loyal students who frequently refer new customers. The university should identify true loyal students of university and provide them deserving facilities. To do this task could be a challenging task for university and university could take help of professionals who can manage and handle database associated with the university and track loyal students by viewing the name associated with a particular student and its frequency being entered to the website. This could help the university to deal with the issue of tracking loyal students.
Issue with mobile application
With university’s approach to reaching mobile users with their university’s business policy by developing a mobile application is seen a positive step toward maximising university’s profit margin, the, however, the university needs to struggle with some issues that come under deployment of mobile application(Gerber, 2016.).
Various platforms available
The university should be able to deal with various platforms that are possible on the mobile platform. Just focusing on one particular platform of OS, students who are using different platform cannot be covered with university’s business policy (Picón-Berjoyo et al., 2016). Moreover, managing mobile application with different platform requires programmers who are proficient on various platforms, and this is challenging task for the university to hire those professional.
Difficult and hidden features
Several mobile applications and features that are launched to cover the complex need of university can be difficult to find out features and functionalities supported by the particular application. This makes university’s services hidden and obscured to the majority of users and university cannot be successful with providing service to a larger group of users. Moreover, it is challenging for the university to deal with their business policy.
Challenges and Issues That are Raised with Managing IT Processes of World University
ERP (Enterprise resource planning) is business activities management software that provides business owners with the ability to manage and integrate different applications associated with business operations. This software adds reliability integrity associated with technology, applications and human resources. The implementation of this ERP tool can manage a different component of the University and owners can have less trouble handling business plans. Along with this facility, university management must confront challenges with implementation and handling of the tool (Wailgum, 2017).
The university having web services enabled with different features enabled within itself, there will be a significant challenge with University for integrating various business process and web browsers along with ERP tool and without proper rapport existing in between these components, business activity associated with University.
The basic requirement of selection of ERP tool should be known at prior than university chooses to implement, without this prior knowledge of essence the tool cannot be effective with its purpose with the university. With a motive to increase the productivity and business value owners of University should make a critical analysis of the present requirement of the university and then only decide to implement the tool.
With ERP software implemented to business policy previously adopted, business philosophy can take significant change, and this may reduce the interest of partners involved within the business. The owner must be able to manage this scenario with proper justification of software’s advantages regarding operation speed and accuracy of work carried on the business. A proper encouragement for some members of the university will always be challenging issue with the owners of merged institutions.
Technological issues can always come with business owners when they must be dealing with new application thus university must be able to deal with this challenge. The process can be challenging to deal, and owners must confront it.
The web 4.0 level of the web is an ultra-intelligent electronic agent that is proposed experience for internet users with an ultimate level of interactivity present with internet use and also the possibility of intelligent. This web version of the system can revolutionise whole internet world and change experience of users internet use. With University being able to implement this version of the web platform, the interactivity and features available to students of University are increased to a significant level (Fowler and Rodd, 2016). Users visiting could be easily be recognised by an intelligent feature within web platform, and the site could easily manage loyal students of the university without any trouble of handling database of students.
This version of the web is just in its development phase and has not been yet released, but the whole experience of internet use of user can be changed once significantly it is released.
Conclusion
The university’s motive to maximise the profit by merging different learning istitutions is seen to face several issues on completion of intended motive. Especially, IT features intended to upgrade my university is seen to face several issues and these issues are dealt with consideration of advantages and disadvantages and possible mitigation steps that university can rely upon.
The university to implement a system that is scalable and can support future additions of new functions. Secondly, it should have a parallel system that ensures that in case the website experiences technical failures, the learning process can still go on. Thirdly, ensure that security policies are updated every day to ensure that student and lecturer details are private and confidential from unauthorized third parties.
References
Bahrami, M., Ghorbani, M. and Arabzad, S. (2012). Information Technology (IT) as An Improvement Tool For Student Relationship Management (CRM). Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences. [Online]. 41,pp.59–64. [Accessed 8 May 2018]. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042812008889.
Cossío-Silva, F., Revilla-Camacho, M., Vázquez, M. and Palacios-Florencio, B. (2016). Value co-creation and student loyalty. Journal of Business Research. [Online]. 69(5),pp.1621–1625. [Accessed 8 May 2018]. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296315004518.
Fowler, J. and Rodd, E. (2016). Web 4.0: The Ultra-Intelligent Electronic Agent is Coming | Big Think. [Accessed 8 May 2018]. Available from: https://bigthink.com/big-think-tv/web-40-the-ultra-intelligent-electronic-agent-is-coming.
Gerber, S. (2016). The 8 most overlooked mobile app usability issues (and how to fix them). [Accessed 8 May 2018]. Available from: https://mashable.com/2016/05/26/mobile-app-usability-issues/#aS1eKYBabaqm.
Hisham, A. (2015). Single Vs Multiple Websites – Which Is Better For SEO? [Infograph]. [Accessed 8 May 2018]. Available from: https://seopressor.com/blog/single-website-vs-multiple-websites-for-seo/.
Picón-Berjoyo, A., Ruiz-Moreno, C. and Castro, I. (2016). A mediating and multiuniversity analysis of student loyalty. European Management Journal. [Online]. 34(6),pp.701–713. [Accessed 8 May 2018]. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237316300895.
Porssa, A. and Mirzazadeh, H. (2016). Develop an Information Technology Model to Improve Student Service in NIGCS1. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences. [Online]. 229,pp.167–174. [Accessed 8 May 2018]. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042816310618.
Wailgum, T. (2017). What is ERP? A guide to enterprise resource planning systems. [Accessed 8 May 2018]. Available from: https://www.cio.com/article/2439502/enterprise-resource-planning/enterprise-resource-planning-erp-definition-and-solutions.html.
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