Card, mobile credential, payment and security
A new mobile safety app is being used at Ohio State University that's designed to enable students to quickly and easily call for campus security escorts or emergency aid directly from their smartphone. The initiative intends to provide students with more personal safety options while walking alone on campus.
According to local Columbus affiliate, Fox 28, the launch of the Lifeline Response app comes days after a female student reported being assaulted in her residence hall. There have been a reported 12 sexual assaults on the OSU campus so far this school year, the most recent of which occurred the week before the Lifeline Response app went live. The app was made available for OSU students to download this week and is now fully functional on the Columbus campus.
As with many other campus safety apps currently on the market, the Lifeline Response app enables users to request help anywhere directly from their smartphone. The app also enables users to report suspicious activity to police, as well as leverages GPS to inform police where help is needed.
OSU's student government association has been working to bring a safety app to campus for several years in an effort to boost campus security after dark, but stress too that the app is not an outright replacement for being aware of your surroundings and not walking alone. The LifeLine Response app is free to download and use for students and also works in other cities.
It goes without saying that master keys for campus residence halls are valuable, but a set of misplaced master keys at the College of William and Mary has led to a hard lesson learned. The college is now replacing dorm room and exterior locks across its Williamsburg, Virginia campus as part of a project that will cost in excess of $500,000.
Per a report from The Flat Hat, the re-coring project is currently underway and affects all but one of the residence halls on William and Mary's campus. The project follows an announcement made in the fall semester by William and Mary Police that a set of master keys had been lost and was never recovered.
William and Mary's Department of Facilities Management is spearheading the project, which includes the replacement of the approximately 3,000 lock sets ranging from individual student dorm rooms to exterior residence hall doors. The re-coring alone will cost an estimated $399,444. As a preventative measure, 20 electronically controlled master key storage boxes will also be installed. The boxes are meant to improve the management of residence hall master keys and will cost an added $162,346. In total, the lock project is expected to reach $561,790.
College officials insist that the safety of students remains the priority throughout the re-coring project, and that the locksmiths contracted by William and Mary are all bonded and insured and will be escorted by security personnel while replacing the lock sets. Work is expected to be systematically carried out Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. systematically one residence hall at a time until the project is completed.
As part of the re-coring, all old keys and lock cores will be turned over to the William and Mary, while student residents are expected to return their old keys in exchange for their new ones. The old keys and cores will not be re-used by the college but are likely to be sold as surplus, at which point they could be repurposed by another organization or simply recycled for scrap metal.
Student residents will be notified via email when it comes time for their residence hall and dorm room locks to be replaced. The initial plan was to carry out the re-coring over the winter break so as to avoid disruptions to student residents, but delays from the college's chosen manufacturer pushed the project start date back to the spring semester.
William and Mary's Residence Life says that lock changes have already been completed in five campus residence halls, as well as three sorority houses. Lock replacements are ongoing, but the college is yet to set a definite completion date.
By: Kent Pawlak, Product Strategy Director, Blackboard Transact
It seems logical that students who do not attend classes will not perform as well in their academic careers. How much learning can take place in the absence of having enough discipline to attend lectures?
Many studies have been conducted to determine the impact of attendance on academic performance in higher education. Most conclude that higher attendance levels are correlated to superior performance. Superior academic success by students is then correlated to retention and persistence.
Student retention is critical for the financial vitality of a college or university. More than 40% of full-time college students fail to graduate within six years. According to Mike Reilly, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, institutions are under pressure to boost retention rates, and that’s leading to more campus-wide policies about attendance.1
As with academic performance, student attendance in class is also directly linked to student retention. Because attendance data can be one measure of a student’s level of academic engagement, innovative colleges and universities have begun to use this data for predictive purposes. These campuses can monitor attendance and other indicators of student engagement, with intervention processes in place for students who are most at risk of leaving without a degree.
Clearly, tracking attendance can help institutions identify students in danger of underperforming academically, as well as help engage and retain students. But keeping careful attendance records also supports the institution’s compliance with Federal Financial Aid requirements for audits and in the event of a Federal Program Review.
In this era of increased financial scrutiny by federal and state government, colleges and universities are tightening their reporting standards and improving information systems to ensure strict compliance with financial aid requirements. Attendance plays a role in many of these requirements.
Taking attendance manually has proven historically burdensome and frustrating for faculty members and administrators. At many universities, the discretion for taking attendance is left up to individual departments or even individual professors. The administration may encourage attendance taking, but not mandate it. This flexibility in policy results in confusion in a number of ways:
The most common complaint from faculty is that taking attendance is time-consuming and a hassle. Some universities have attendance systems that enable a faculty member to check in students on a laptop, or print out a student roster to pass around and then later input the information into the attendance system. Both are active processes that must be heavily managed by the professor.
If a manual method is used for taking attendance, the professor must further ensure that records are complete, valid and properly maintained or delivered to the registrar in the likely event a question arises about attendance in relation to withdrawals or grades. If faculty members take attendance on paper, there is the additional complexity of centralizing and retrieving manual attendance records for use in financial aid compliance or in the event of an audit.
Many colleges and universities would benefit from an automated attendance system to make monitoring attendance as easy as possible for faculty and students. Systems should be evaluated based on ease of use, as well as the availability of this information to the enterprise. This will ensure student retention specialists can use this information for predicting at-risk students and that the institution can execute early intervention strategies or ensure financial aid administrators have up-to-date information to manage compliance.
When talking about the design of a student ID, rarely is the back of the card discussed. It's not the most colorful or aesthetically pleasing side, but universities are reexamining uses for this valuable, finite real estate.
In most cases, the backs of the student IDs feature a paragraph of tiny black-and-white legal jargon and perhaps a barcode or some financial network logos.
But a growing number of institutions are putting the backs of their IDs to a different use by printing campus resource numbers, emergency services lines and other pertinent information for students.
One of the latest institutions to overhaul the back of its ID is the University of Oklahoma. At the start of 2016, all backs of newly printed Sooner Cards will include campus resource numbers for students in need.
The five phone numbers are the university police’s non-emergency number, a SafeWalk number, university health services, university counseling services and 911.
The goal is that students -- in particular freshmen, transfers and internationals -- will be more informed of available local and campus resources. Even 911 is a resource of which international students may not be aware.
[pullquote]The goal is that students – in particular freshmen, transfers and internationals – will be more informed of available local and campus resources[/pullquote]
The idea to incorporate contact information came from the University of Oklahoma Student Government Association (SGA), says Ryan Trevino, director of Oklahoma’s Sooner Card office.
“Historically, the reverse side of the Sooner Card had contact information for the main Sooner Card production office, the Sooner Card logo, the web address for Sooner Card Online, our card management portal and a disclaimer that the Sooner Card is non-transferable,” explains Trevino.
No elements from the reverse of the Sooner Card were removed, though some text was refined to allow for more room to incorporate the new resource phone numbers, he adds. “Because no elements were removed, and others were only refined, we did not have to submit for any additional review.”
Typically universities will print the contact info for the office that issued the cards so if anyone has questions they know where to call, says Mark Degan, corporate marketing manager for ColorID. “Also common are disclaimers that students must carry their card at all times and that the card itself is the property of the university and as such the student must relinquish it upon request,” he adds.
Disclaimer examples include:
ColorID does not provide the text for the end user, but rather places filler text until the campus card office gains approval from its legal department to add the necessary content, explains Degan. “If it’s too much legal verbiage we do work with the card office on shortening the amount of words while still getting the same message across to the cardholder,” he explains.
In addition to disclaimers, there is often information related to the card not being transferrable, how to report a lost or stolen card and the process to follow if you find a card.
“Most often we see legal text, disclaimers, contact information, bar codes, card program website URLs, locations where a student can make a financial deposit and information regarding the card program,” says Fred Emery, director of OneCard sales at Heartland Campus Solutions. “If using a contactless card that embedded contactless number may also be printed on the back of the card.”
He notes that barcode printing is declining as campus libraries move to more advanced technology for patron identification.
“We recommend involving the areas responsible for the card program – typically the legal team and marketing department – to craft the information printed on the card. If a banking relationship is involved the banking partner should also be included in this conversation so everyone’s needs are met,” says Emery.
By: Brett St. Pierre, Director of Business Development, Education Solutions, HID Global
University pilots have previewed the promise of industry advancements that enable smartphones to carry credentials. Students, faculty and staff at university campuses will be able to use a ubiquitous device to open doors and perform other tasks that require presentation of a secure credential. University administrators know that mobile phones seem to be permanently in their students’ hands, making their use for access convenient and quite natural. Much has been learned from the pilots in 2015 that will pave the way for broader deployments in 2016.
In addition to improving convenience, mobile access enables universities to reap the benefit of cost savings on credentials. Plus, students lose their mobile phones less often than they lose their cards so, ultimately, the cost for replacement credentials is reduced.
University employees also benefit from carrying credentials on their phones. They aren’t required to wear their ID cards, so they may arrive at a facility without one and have trouble gaining access. But since most carry their cell phone everywhere, the ability to gain access is a given if these phones also carry their credentials.
In addition, the latest solutions enable universities to implement mobile access on a variety of smartphones without the need for any hardware add-ons or attachments, such as having to insert a handset into a sleeve or slide if it does not support certain features. Institutions that have piloted the HID Mobile Access solution say that this improves user convenience while also giving the university a greater degree of flexibility in offering students, faculty and staff the ability to use their smartphone as their credential without incurring additional expense.
Pilot deployments have shown that a big requirement for mobile access adoption is the ability to use a broad range of phones without a sleeve, slide or other add-on accessory. University administrators have seen NFC pilots in the past but prefer a solution that doesn’t require additional hardware to work on a wide range of handsets. And when they can build on their existing infrastructure, such as an iCLASS deployment, it makes for a natural progression.
Universities are also using pilots to see if solutions are as easy to use as they sound in theory. Unless the alternative to using an existing card is as easy and convenient as mobile access, few administrators see people actually using it. They also need to be sure that the solution is secure and easy to administer.
University pilots of HID Mobile access have met these goals. Early areas of investigation have included questions about what happens to the system if the power goes out. When door access is with fail-over generators, users can still enter buildings during a power failure. Pilot participants also realize that when using a smartphone for mobile access, the device itself must have battery power in order to start the communication between the smartphone and the reader. Most testers report little to no change in battery life on devices that are supporting the HID Mobile Access App.
Reactions from pilot participants have been very positive. According to one university administrator, “they love the convenience – rather than having to dig out their ID cards they just use their phones, which in most cases are already in their hands.”
Employees in card issuing offices often have interesting stories of people coming in to replace their IDs. The card will be splitting into its different layers and when asked how it happened they explain they used it as an ice scraper on their windshield. Or the card will be warped and faded and the cardholder will admit to leaving it on their car’s dashboard on a hot summer day.
Federal and state agencies as well as other high-value issuers want to get as much out of a document as possible, and a 10-year lifespan seems the ultimate objective. To achieve this issuers are moving away from 100% PVC cards – the cheapest and most common type – to composite cards made up of a variety of materials, often including polyesters, polycarbonate or Teslin substrate.
Issuers are moving away from single substrate, monopolymer cards, says Joanne Ogden, global sales manager for the security division at ITW. “The standard is not a 100% PVC card anymore – because it’s not durable enough and won’t last five to 10 years,” she says.
In the past few years, the credentialing market has shifted dramatically when it comes to card materials, Ogden says. “The increased need for durability has completely changed the market. Gone are they days of PVC and top laminates,” she adds. “The documents now are far more complex, there are far more substrates out there along with an increased number of security features.”
Choosing the right materials for an identity card is important when it comes to durability. But the first thing an issuer must decide is what it means by durability. “What is the expectation of a document? Do they want it to last for five, seven or 10 years?” asks Pierre Scaglia, global segment manager for Secure Credentials at PPG Industries, which produces Teslin. “How will the document be used? Is it used once in awhile or several times each day? All of this will impact durability.”
The climate can even impact the durability of a credential. “Durability can depend heavily on the usage scenarios and environments,” says Brad McGoran, principal engineer at Exponent, a consultancy that performs card testing. “For example, cards used frequently outdoors can degrade and become brittle due to UV exposure, leading to premature failure and cracking.”
Security of the document also needs to be taken into account. An issuer can produce the longest lasting document, but if it doesn’t include security features strong enough to see it through such a lifespan, then it has done little good, Scaglia says.
Issuers are embedding security features into the different substrate layers of the card to make it counterfeit proof, Ogden says. “You might have a hologram embedded on one layer and another feature on the Teslin layer,” she explains.
Electronic components add another level of complexity when talking about durability. More and more, identity documents contain embedded electronics, and protecting these chips and antenna coils is important. “If you use highly rigid card materials with embedded electronics, in time they may crack,” says Scaglia. He adds that both PVC and polycarbonate are typically considered among the more rigid card materials.
Cards with embedded electronic components may have a shorter lifespan based on that fact alone, McGoran says. “With contact, contactless and dual-interface cards, our experience and testing have shown that the durability of the internal components, circuitry and connections can significantly affect card life longevity,” he explains.
Still, maximizing lifespan is the goal and composite cards made with different materials have the best durability, says McGoran. “Blended cards such as PVC and polyester blends tend to resist cracking during repetitive flexure testing better than pure PVC card stock,” he explains. “We have observed this often translates to longer service life in the field for these blended cards versus pure PVC card bodies.”
Blended cards such as PVC and polyester blends tend to resist cracking during repetitive flexure testing better than pure PVC card stock
Polycarbonate cards are popular for European credentialing projects, Ogden says. “But polycarbonate isn’t the only answer,” she explains. “There are other substrates out there that are more cost effective and could be used with both local and central issuance applications.”
“These alternatives can also be as or more secure and durable than all-polycarbonate cards because of their increased chemical resistance, abrasion resistance and flexibility,” says Scaglia.
In honor of Throwback Thursday, each week we're going to pull and review a story from the CR80News archives. With any luck, in the time since these stories originally broke some form of progress will have been made, predictions will have come true -- or not -- and at the very least we can sit back and wonder what we were thinking.
The first edition of Throwback Thursday isn't the furthest jump back in time, but it's one of CR80News' most highly trafficked stories year after year. It's the infamous "cell phone demagnetizing a key card" myth. This story has been so popular over the years that it merited an update in 2011, and still the hits keep coming.
Citing a CPI Card Group study conducted in 2009, card users experienced issues while carrying mag stripe movie theater cards in their pockets with a cell phone.
Crucially, though, mag stripes vary in their coercivity, with higher coercivity stripes -- typically deployed on credit cards -- being more resistant to demagnetization than hotel key cards that traditionally fall lower on the coercivity scale. The lower the coercivity the more susceptible the card will be to demagnetization, but questions have long existed as to whether a cell phone has a powerful enough magnetic force to impact even a low coercivity card.
It's not clear exactly why this story remains so popular years after being published, but with mag stripe technology still a mainstay on a great number of college campuses nationwide, it is clear that fundamental questions surrounding mag stripe technology are still being asked.
From 2011, here's Mythbusters: Can a mobile phone erase a hotel key card?
To keep up with Throwback Thursday stories and other key happenings, follow and engage with CR80News on Twitter.
A post-audit recently completed by George Mason University reveals that the institution could save more than $1 million during the initial five years with its new cloud-based campus card system from Atrium.
George Mason, the largest university in the Commonwealth of Virginia, has a total enrollment of 30,000 students across five campuses. The institution’s new card system includes more than 16 real-time connections to campus systems and 660 points of sale spanning dining, vending, copy/print and off-campus locations.
George Mason deployed the Atrium system roughly 18 months ago following an RFP process. “The reason we opted for Atrium was the reduced operating costs, combined with the ability to have a cloud-based service and be agnostic in equipment requirements,” says Mark Kraner, executive director of retail operations at George Mason.
“The ID card is used for door access, laundry, rec center access, event attendance, print and copy, and an off-campus solution,” says Kraner.
The need to be hardware agnostic was important to George Mason, he explains, because the university leverages a wide variety of hardware types and manufacturers including USA Technologies, Sequoia, HID, Pharos and more.
According to Kraner, the cloud-based architecture has also streamlined costs for George Mason’s card system. “By removing servers from the campus server farm we eliminated our rent payment and the cost of the system administrators,” he says. “Cloud services also provide a better disaster recovery program for the campus.”
To better characterize the savings and general expectations of the Atrium system, George Mason conducted a comprehensive post audit and analysis that spans the first five years of the system’s life.
At the helm of the post audit was Daniel Anthes, senior manager of information technology at George Mason University.
[pullquote]We saved a yearly salary of over $100,000, and the headaches that can arise when unknowledgeable system admins make changes without fully understanding the impact.[/pullquote]
“We expected going into the process that over the long term we would see savings, and we wanted to validate these savings,” explains Anthes. “Further, VP’s like to see the proof in the pudding. Ultimately, our decision was partly based on our expectation of savings and, in part, to validate our RFP process.”
As Anthes explains, the post audit was a fairly involved process, utilizing complied data from the RFP responses as well as actual university invoices. The first step was to examine licensing costs. This was pretty straightforward, and consisted of mostly side-by-side comparisons of quoted license fees, he explains.
Next, they looked at savings attributable to the cloud-based architecture, which fell into three categories:
Finally, they looked at hardware savings. The new system enabled George Mason to select hardware providers and even procure some equipment directly thus reducing overall hardware costs, explains Anthes.
“In terms of cost savings, the ability to procure the registers and peripheral hardware devices has been dramatic,” Kraner adds.
Conducting a post audit of a card system may not sound like the most exciting task, but when done properly the results can provide invaluable insight into a campus card system’s performance. For George Mason, the post audit revealed significant savings resulting from the move to the new system.
The most significant savings were found in licensing, cloud services and hardware, explains Anthes. “The biggest chunk was found in cloud savings. This was followed by licensing and then hardware.”
Another cloud benefit George Mason has realized is the ability to constantly run the latest software versions. “We see upgrades overnight instead of during the day and we are always on the latest software version with latest features and functionality,” says Anthes.
The way forward for George Mason and Atrium seems promising, and the work being done to audit the system should only help improve it over time. Thanks to impressive cost savings and architecture benefits, it’s easy to see why George Mason’s audit has the university’s head in the cloud.
“From a global perspective our audit paints a compelling story for the cloud,” says Anthes. “For smaller data center operations, the picture was pretty clear to us when comparing self-hosted versus cloud.”
By: Jeff Hardy, Chief Business Officer at Tapingo
66% of students eat off campus. 66% of students are choosing convenience.
With an increasing number of students choosing an alternative to campus dining services, universities are losing hundreds of millions of dollars and missing out on countless opportunities to engage students and improve retention rates.
To change this statistic, you have to first ask why students would choose to eat off campus, and then investigate where they’re going instead.
Imagine that it’s lunch time and you’re down to two options: the first is to stop what you’re doing, join the herds of people heading toward the cafeteria, wait in line to place your order, raise your voice to make sure the specifics of your order are heard, stand in line to pay, wait for the machine to process your payment, and finally enjoy some food!
Your second option is to use your phone. In just a few clicks, you can browse menus, customize your order, pay, then have your lunch delivered or scheduled for pickup at your convenience. No waiting. No lines. No hassle.
Which would you choose?
Today’s college students have been raised with on-demand technology, so they’re accustomed to the convenience and customization that this technology gives them in every other aspect of their lives – including food.
[pullquote]Prior to launching Tapingo, campus dining services could expect to lose a whopping 75% of student diners between their sophomore and junior year.[/pullquote]
On-demand food delivery companies have redefined convenience for the entire dining industry, and in recent years we’ve seen a meteoric rise in the number of these types of companies and the services they provide.
Not only are these companies growing in number, they are targeting the college market. For these companies, attracting students who are not customers of campus dining services is the low hanging fruit. This 66% of the student population includes students who live off campus and don’t have easy access to campus dining facilities; students who don’t keep normal schedules and therefore miss traditional meal times; and students with busy schedules that prevent them from eating between classes.
This 66% of students looking to eat elsewhere poses a significant challenge to the endurance of campus dining services. Campuses looking to engage students must keep pace with these external services to maintain the high standards for recruitment and retention.
What campuses might not know is that they are well positioned to easily reach and build meaningful connections with the students they are currently not serving – those who are eating off campus. The major advantage that campuses have over outside vendors is the meal plan. By leveraging mobile capabilities, campuses can evolve the meal plan in a way that reduces labor costs at on-campus venues all while providing students with a healthier, yet equally convenient, alternative to ramen!
Today, more than 100 institutions are using Tapingo’s mobile technology to achieve this. For campuses like the University of Arizona, the University of Southern California, and Loyola Marymount University, providing mobile ordering and delivery has created access to additional revenue streams and a vehicle to drive engagement.
Having benefitted from the success and high engagement of Tapingo’s mobile ordering, the University of Arizona initiated on-demand delivery service as a promotional project in which students could use their campus card’s declining balance funds to have food delivered to them from popular late night venues during each exam period.
[pullquote]Arizona saw an increase in total orders of 162% in 2015 thanks to mobile ordering and delivery[/pullquote]
The pilot program was so successful that the campus decided to offer Tapingo’s services year round from several on-campus venues. In 2015, the University of Arizona saw an increase in total orders of 162% and an impressive 164% increase in unique users.
Similarly, the University of Southern California is extremely conscientious when it comes to the services it provides to students and has recognized the necessity of mobile technology in the university’s overall recruitment and retention strategy.
For USC, Tapingo’s mobile ordering and delivery services are simply part of being a Millennial, and as the highest-ranking value add for students, Tapingo should be part of the student experience for all USC students. Since implementing Tapingo, USC has grown their market share, with the majority of transactions coming from upperclassmen and grad students.
Loyola Marymount University, a small private school in southern California, has also benefitted from implementing Tapingo’s mobile capabilities. Through this initial partnership, LMU successfully engaged students through Tapingo’s advanced mobile ordering solution.
The addition of the delivery service launched student engagement to new heights. Tapingo has boosted overall sales at venues that had previously been less frequented by traditional pickup. On-campus venues now account for more than 33% of total on-demand delivery services.
In the past, colleges may have been held back by logistical complications, so Tapingo is taking the approach of managing all of the necessary operations – hiring, training, managing, and shouldering the liability for a network of student couriers. Regardless of the institution’s size, private vs. public, or location, adopting a service like Tapingo is proven to be a low-touch, comprehensive solution that arms campuses with the ability to compete with external on-demand services.
Prior to launching Tapingo, campus dining services could expect to lose a whopping 75% of student diners between their sophomore and junior year. By providing users with a convenient and easy-to-use service that students are familiar with, Tapingo helps campuses retain an estimated 80% of upperclassmen. Rather than settling for an ever-shrinking piece of a rapidly expanding pie, campus dining can use Tapingo to vastly expand the market.
Most campuses provide a range of great dining options, carefully planned to be in convenient locations and open during peak hours. But by thinking just a bit bigger, institutions can open up access to new markets that can secure the future of campus dining.
