Particularly post-Covid-19, there will be a need for virtual education to mirror the collaborative nature of in-person teaching and offer a quality, personalised experience regardless of location. This is where a virtualised IT set-up can help.
Benefits of virtualisation in education
Virtualisation reduces the time and effort required to manage the collection of endpoint devices in an educational setting in the following ways:
- Improved remote learning
Virtualisation provides the optimum environment for remote learning. It enables educators and students to teach and learn from any location and device.
- Faster Desktop Allocation and Deletion
Creating learning environments for new students and removing graduates is time-consuming but virtual desktops can automate this process.
- Custom Image Support
Student requirements for different operating systems (OSs) and applications can vary. Instead of installing different versions of desktops on individual endpoints, virtualisation can create a base golden image for students and reuse it by deploying it across different endpoints in seconds.
- Better Security
Data is stored on a centralised server instead of being spread around individual endpoints, improving security.
- Bring Your Device (BYOD)
Virtualisation supports a BYOD scheme, improving flexibility and reducing organisational cost.
- Ease of Management
Virtualisation removes the need to manually install or update operating systems or applications on each endpoint and enables management from a central location.
- Support for Visitors
Creating virtual desktops for guests and visiting professors is much quicker and easier.
- Support for Mac and Windows
Virtualisation removes the common BYOD challenge by supporting various OSs, including Windows, macOS, iOS and Android Users can access the same virtual desktop, regardless of the device being used.
Challenges of virtualisation in education
The challenge with any new solution is ensuring it meets requirements. Without proper research, a virtualisation solution can cause upfront investment costs due to additional hardware needs. Extra costs could also be incurred if the infrastructure setup is complex as experts may be needed to build and deploy it successfully.
Security should also be considered to protect confidential data related to research and exams, and the licensing of the virtualisation solution should complement infrastructure capacity planning.
How Parallels RAS helps
As a remote teaching and learning solution, it’s simple and user-friendly with quick provisioning and auto-scaling of resources. It comes with prebuilt templates that you can use to deploy in the field and on-premises.
Parallels RAS ensures security by using policies that limit access based on user, group permissions, locations, and devices and supports FIPS 140-2, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption and multifactor authentication (MFA).
To find out more, please visit Parallels RAS for education and try it for free, or get in touch here.
