Dominik Rudolph

Cloud Storage Services in Higher Education – Results of a Preliminary Study in the Context of the Sync&Share-Project in Germany

In recent years, a growing number of institutions in higher education is in progress to adopt cloud storage services. This paper describes the Sync&Share NRW-project in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) with a target audience of up to 500,000 users and presents the main results of a preliminary large-scale survey at the University of Muenster with more than 3,000 participants. The results of the analysis indicates a very high demand for an on-premise cloud service solution in German higher education with mobile access, a storage volume comparable to commercial offerings, collaborative features such as simultaneous work on text documents and, above all, high data protection standards.

Sync&Share North Rhine-Westphalia: a case on a university-based cloud computing service provider

Raimund Vogl is the project leader of a large-scale project that aims to introduce a university-based cloud storage service to major German universities. He needs to convince other universities to join the project. The case is based on a real situation and shows real challenges. The university-based scenario helps students to better put themselves in the context of the case. Furthermore, the case serves to teach the basic principles, risks, and benefits of cloud computing. The main challenge faced by the protagonist is to come up with a plan for organizational and user adoption. Accordingly, several technology-related theories can be used. In addition to user adoption theories such as the technology acceptance model, this case demonstrates the need of Sync&Share NRW to be perceived as a trustworthy provider. The case helps to understand the concept of trust, the relationship between trust and cloud computing acceptance, and ways to gain trust in the context of cloud computing.

A Requirements Engineering Process for User Centered IT Services – Gathering Service Requirements for the University of the Future

The process of digitalization challenges universities worldwide, in particular the universities’ IT. Using ITIL and the ITSM-focused application of software requirements engineering as a basis, qualitative interviews with students were conducted to gather information on service requirements. Three service categories clearly dominate the students’ wishes for IT support: study organization, online literature and software provision. As regards the study organization, a centralized platform granting access to all relevant information and services (e.g. schedule, exam administration, certificates, study progress, contact information) is particularly important. From the students’ point of view, IT should enable them to focus on the content of their studies, provide support for organizational problems, and grant easy access to resources, such as literature and software, while at the same time require little effort.

The Digital Transformation of Teaching in Higher Education from an Academic’s Point of View: An Explorative Study

The process of digitalization challenges universities worldwide, in particular the universities’ IT. Qualitative interviews with lecturers were conducted to gather information on service requirements. The lecturers’ experiences and suggestions demonstrate that, from their perspective, an improvement of the IT infrastructure and equipment is only secondary for the digitalization of teaching at Munster University. Instead, a centralization of information, knowledge and expertise in the field of digital teaching is required. Lecturers wish for a ‘center for digitalization’ which they can contact for information and practical advice on existing IT services, for counseling on digital teaching concepts, and for support in the implementation of new digitalization ideas. From the lecturers’ point of view, the university’s perspective on digital teaching has to change as well, overcoming baseless concerns that digitalization inevitably results in an entirely virtual university. In addition, incentive systems for excellent new forms of teaching would give more value to lecturers’ efforts.

Predictions on Service Adoption and Utilization Meet Reality

A large academic cloud storage service was launched in the beginning of 2015 by the majority of the public research and applied science universities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) under the brand name “sciebo”. One year after the start, we will examine if the predictions made on service adoption in the preparatory project phase based on the well-known diffusion model by Rogers apply to reality. This is the first study about the adoption of a specific cloud service at several universities. We identify two factors affecting the speed of diffusion: share of technophiles and the use of marketing measures. Organization size does not seem to influence the speed of diffusion .

How to Improve Research Data Management

The digitalization of research processes has led to a vast amount of data. Since third-party funding institutions progressively set standards and requirements regarding the handling of such data, research data management has become important in the context of international research collaboration projects. Simultaneously, adequate collaboration systems are needed to support scientists in this context. In this paper we discuss existing standards for research data management in the context of third-party funding and how cloud technology could support the fulfillment of existing provisions.

sciebo – the Campuscloud: a Sync and Share Cloud Storage Service for the Academic and Research Community in North Rhine-Westphalia

Under the brand name “sciebo – theCampuscloud” (derived from “science box”) a consortium of more than 20 research and applied science universities started a large scale private cloud storage service hosted on premise at the universities designed to be available for up to 500,000 students and researchers in North Rhine-Westphalia. Starting with the much anticipated data privacy compliant sync & share functionality, sciebo offers the potential to become a more general cloud platform for collaboration and research data management which will be actively pursued in upcoming scientific and infrastructural projects. This project report describes the formation of the venture, its targets and the technical and the legal solution as well as the current status and the next steps.