All you need to know about the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2022

The education sector is undergoing a rapid transition, especially with the new learning trends, technologies, and changing student expectations. While educational leaders and industry experts are trying to address these challenges by keeping up with the latest EdTech developments, there is still a lot to achieve. The EDUCAUSE community is actively involved in acknowledging these new and upcoming roadblocks and hosts conversations to make way for long-term solutions, collaborations, and better outcomes. 

The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference is one such meet-up of global education industry stakeholders that adds impact to the community’s efforts. It will be held in-person and online at different schedules in Denver, Colorado. The in-person event will take place on 25th – 28th October 2022. The virtual event is scheduled for 2nd – 3rd November 2022. 

Who Will Attend? 

The Conference will be the meeting point of global education industry leaders and technology providers. It will offer them an opportunity to discuss their solutions and experiences of addressing the challenges of higher education. The CloudLabs team will be there too. 

Program Tracks 

• Teaching and Learning 
• Leadership and Future Workforce 
• Cybersecurity and Privacy 
• Student Engagement and Success 
• Innovation and Emerging Technologies 
• Supporting Research Computing 
• Infrastructure and Networking 
• Policy and Law 

Why You Should Attend 

If you are a decision maker of your educational institution or someone even remotely associated with Higher Ed IT, this conference is for you. The conference Exhibit Hall will host industry leaders who will showcase their latest technological solutions to the higher education community. 

The conference includes a series of other events one of which is the Start-up Alley. It will provide emerging EdTech organizations the opportunity to showcase their products and capabilities to Campus IT leaders visiting the event. EdTech startups like CloudLabs will get a chance to gain exposure, build strong connections, and receive valuable feedback. 

Apart from these, Under the Ed Radar Pitch Competition, Learning Theater, and some more activities will also be organized at the event hall. The event will be an excellent place to grow your network and gain industry insights. 

Meet CloudLabs at the Start-up Alley 

As an educationalist, searching for the best training solution for your campus IT, make sure you stop by Booth #1361 where you’ll meet CloudLabs. It is one of the technology providers exhibiting at the Start-Up Alley. 

CloudLabs is a virtual IT labs platform with multiple use cases from Teaching, Trainings, Workshops, Virtual Events, Sales Demos, to POCs. It has enabled ISVs, Educational Institutions, and Training Providers to leverage hands-on experiences for effective technology learning, operations and sales. 

Educational Institutions leverage CloudLabs to deliver high-impact training remotely. It empowers instructors to bridge the gap between theoretical explanation and practical hands-on experiences for even the most technical concepts. 

Keep reading to learn more about this multi-featured platform-

1. Hands-on labs 

Institutions can Leverage virtual hands-on labs for training students with a primary focus on developing practical skills. With the following CloudLabs’ features, institutions can enable a smooth and seamless training experience for their staff and students.  

•  Instant lab deployments 
• Pre-configured labs accessible anytime anywhere 
• Self-paced MOC labs 
• Custom labs for long-running courses 

Get hands-on with a single click on the CloudLabs platform.  

       2. Cost-Cutting Features 

Cloud-related courses involve consumption of cloud resources, some of which can be very expensive. Also, human errors like leaving labs running in the background can generate some heavy expenses that can exceed your estimated budget. For this, CloudLabs has come up with novel features to help institutions with effective cost management. 

• Credit-based allocation– This feature tracks daily consumption of resources and triggers notifications to students and instructors on daily costs, remaining credits, and when students reach the allocated usage threshold. 
• Lab-Uptime– Instructors can allocate a lab-uptime, an estimated duration for daily lab usage after which labs will shut down automatically. 
• Daily cost reports and student analytics– By tracking student activities and generating daily cost reports, instructors can have full visibility on the resources consumed and the kind of expenses generated by such provisioning. Hence, institutions can decide upon a budget appropriate for each course and setup restrictions on heavy consumption of resources. 

With CloudLabs, institutions can reduce infrastructure costs by up to 80%. 

        3.  Strong Automation framework 

CloudLabs can automate a series of tasks for courses at scale. Instructors can completely focus on proctoring rather than monotonous tasks like: 

• Setting Azure policies. 
• Onboarding and offboarding students by setting up lab environment access as per the course duration. 
• Cost monitoring for students 
• Access control through RBAC policies. 
• Extending Microsoft licenses required for students. 

        4. Ease of Access 

CloudLabs provides easy on-boarding with instant lab spin-ups directly via web-browsers. No additional configurations are required besides a strong internet connection and there are no dependencies on IT staff. 

      5. Shadow Labs: 

Instructors can keep a close watch on individual lab environments of attendees for progress tracking and can provide help and support in real time.   

      6. Multi cloud Compatibility 

Integrate your cloud hosted virtual labs with leading cloud providers of your choice: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP. 

      7. Instant Support 

Outstanding support team with a group of Level 2 engineers and highly qualified Azure consultants who offer full coverage during events and are always by your side. 

Educational institutions need to upgrade their existing course designs and align the curriculum with present-day industry requirements. The only way to bridge the existing skill gap is by allowing students to get hands-on with the latest technology. With CloudLabs, allow your students to explore various scenarios and challenges, and help them learn real world values like cost-management. The upcoming EDUCAUSE conference is a great opportunity to explore your options and select the right one for your institution, staff, and students. 

Avinash Sharma