Posts Tagged ‘Social Networking’

ESADE’s IT Improvement Projects

December 28, 2009

With the ever-growing needs for a better IT infrastructure, ESADE figured it is time to use the Christmas holidays to work on the IT. This is great news as it seems that our IT improvement roundtable in November is bearing fruits.

In the month of November theĀ  staff members who are related to the IT as well as 8 students (4 with IT background and 4 without) sat together and held an IT improvement workshop. We raised all the pressing issues, prioritised them and started working on them.

Throughout the month of December on of the most pressing issues of wifi signal strength have already been attacked and new, stronger wifi routers have been set-up all over the campus. Hopefully this will have effect as of next January, as there was no noticeable improvement as of December 16th, the last time I was on campus.

In addition the printing services have been upgraded. Now the student ID, which can be topped-up with money, replaces the printing cards and simultaneously makes the log-in process to the print jobs more efficient. (Insider information: soon there will be a major push for using the student ID for paying in the canteens instead of using cash. That makes the serving a lot faster and therefore everbody should have the caffein level boosted much faster in the morning. There will also be top-up facilities outside the canteens, as I have heard from reliable sources ;)

The internal social network NEXUS has been launched in the recent days, which also indicates new ways of communication and networking among the students, professors and alumni. This is a great move and hopefully the communication becomes easier and does not need to be hosted on external networking services such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Tip: Nexus could also become a better meeting place for ESADE candidates, newly-recruits and applicants with current students.

Apparently there is major work being undertaken on the Intranet, as the new Intranet “Moodle” is undergoing maintenance as I write. Hopefully the ergonomy of the Intranet improves and the Moodle replaces the old Intranet in total.

As I am part of the think-tank I can assure you that there are many more issues being improved on and that ESADE is working hard on making student life easier from an IT point.

Insider information: there is a good chance that the ESADE application process will improve and that soon there will be an online submission facility of the recommendation letters. This would make the applications a lot easier. It seems that the ESADE is one of the last MBA schools that still has the paper-based only system but that hopefully should change in the coming months.