Card, mobile credential, payment and security
A new meal plan structure at Ohio University is enabling students to swipe in more guests at campus dining halls. Previously only students with Flex residential meal plans could swipe guests into the dining halls, but beginning this semester guest swipes are being extended to the university's Traditional 14- and 20-meal plans.
According to Ohio University's Culinary Services website, students can choose from two types of meal plans, Flex and Traditional. Now, students with Traditional 14-meal plans will receive seven additional guest swipes each semester, while the 20-meal plan will come with 10 guest swipes per semester.
The Flex plans come with $450 worth of Flex points to be used as cash at campus dining locations. Guest swipes are available with all meal plans with the exception of the 10-meal option, with guest swipes only being accepted at residential dining venues.
The change was the result of a Culinary Services Development Committee meeting on campus where students raised the idea of guest swipes. The Culinary Services Development Committee meetings typically cover renovations to dining hall infrastructure rather than operational changes, but the addition of guest swipes is so far seen as an improvement to the overall meal plan structure.
The price of the meal plans has not changed as a result of the added guest swipes. However, the smallest and cheapest of the meal plans on offer, the Traditional 10-meal plan, does not allow any guest swipes.
In a move that will do away with individual payments, card swipes and loose change in laundry rooms, the University of Missouri has decided to charge a flat semester fee for students living in campus residence halls.
According to a report from Missouri's campus publication, The Maneater, students living on campus will be charged a flat fee each semester that will allow unlimited use of residence hall washers and dryers. The $50 fee will replace the previous $1.25 charge for each washer and dryer load. Students are charged the fee each semester and will still use their student IDs to activate the machines.
Missouri's Residence Hall Association advocated for the switch alongside input from students living in the halls. Students were notified of the change via email by the Department of Residential Life, and it's projected that students who do at least five loads of laundry each month will ultimately save money with the new pricing system.
The $50 fee was decided upon by committee following a consensus among key campus groups including the Residence Hall Association, ResLife and university administration. Each student living in campus residence halls will see the laundry fee automatically added to their room and board expenses.
The new system will also introduce a feature called "Wash Alert," which will send email or text notifications to students regarding the status of their washer and dryer.
One possible caveat to the new pricing structure is the potential for students to swipe to allow non-residents to use the laundry facilities. University officials concede that this issue was raised when considering the change, but after speaking with other universities that charge a flat rate it was determined that bringing laundry from off campus to the halls is inconvenient enough to deter non-residents.
University officials will monitor the new laundry system regularly throughout the coming semester to evaluate costs and plot any necessary changes.
Students at Florida State University will have a new resource at their disposal as they return to campus for the start of the fall semester in the form of the new Seminole Safe app.
According to an official university release, the Seminole Safe app is a veritable toolbox of resources that enables anyone headed to campus -- student or otherwise -- to leverage a range of valuable information.
The Florida State University Police Department and university Emergency Management have partnered to deliver the new app. With regards to student safety, the university hopes the app will be an effective resource in times when a police officer isn't present.
Seminole Safe alerts students of campus crimes, as well as provides relevant resources in cases of emergency. Users can also send their location to a friend, enabling them to track the user as they're on their way to class or walking back to a dorm. Dubbed "Friend Walk," users can report behavioral concerns such as sexual misconduct or stalking, or trigger a call to emergency officials if necessary.
"The cops can't be everywhere, and the more information you give people about safety and we are things occur are pushing information out to them if something is going on the better than they can make decisions for themselves about their safety," says FSUPD Deputy Chief Jim Russell.
Seminole Safe also provides freshman-friendly information designed to facilitate the move-in process. The app will provide users with directions to buildings and unloading zones, as well as designated parking areas and shuttle bus routes. Beyond freshman move-in, the app's map function displays campus parking lots, blue light phones, and a detailed layout of campus buildings for all campus visitors.
The app is free to download and is available for both iOS and Android devices.
By Tom Stiles, Executive Director, Identification Systems Group
When the topic of card issuance is discussed in the higher education realm, typically we’re talking about the standard CR80 card size – the size of a credit card. We often forget, however, that there are larger format credentials that can be used for a myriad of event ticketing and conference environments.
This begs the questions, then, why would you need a large-format ID? And when does it make sense to issue a larger credential?
When it comes to the “why,” the answer can be simple. It provides a more readable identification credential that can easily be seen from a distance. You may, for example, want the larger credentials to be worn by event attendees or by staff. Which leads us to the “when.” Applications for larger format credentials can include conferences, camps, training sessions and access to special events like campus sporting events or concerts.
Once you’ve determined that large-format credentials are the way to go, the challenge becomes how best to produce these larger credentials – preferably in an easy way and without a high expense. Here are some choices and things to consider.
You may want to issue larger plastic cards if you want the credential to be used more than once, as with a season pass, or if you want it to live on as a keepsake memento. Durability is a major reason to choose plastic credentials.
There are a few card printers on the market that accept larger sizes. They range in price from $3,000 to $10,000 and support either direct-to-card, retransfer or ink jet card printing.
Although the printers will handle larger cards, many direct-to-card printers do not print the entire surface of a large-format ID. They are typically restricted to printing the normal CR80 card size in the middle of the larger card. The remainder of the credential must be preprinted in this case. This gives the ability to have a larger card, but limits how much and how large the printed info can be.
[pullquote]There are card printers on the market that accept larger sizes, ranging in price from $3,000 to $10,000 and supporting direct-to-card, retransfer or ink jet card printing.[/pullquote]
Another direct-to-card printer model prints on a credential that is the same height of a standard CR80 card (2.125”), but twice as long (6.57”). This creates a long, skinny credential that may not be practical for all use cases.
If retransfer printing is your preference, there is a model that can handle 3.375” x 4.875” cards, printing onto the vast majority of the larger card surface. The list price of this printer is about $7,500, and it produces 70 single-sided cards per hour at a cost of roughly $1.15 per card. To put that in perspective, the cost of the blank larger format plastic cards is about 15 cents each.
The final printing method leverages an ink jet plastic card printer that prints on special 3.5” x 5.5” ink-receptive plastic cards. The retail price of the printer is pricier at nearly $10,000, but ink jet plastic card printers operate much faster than direct-to-card or retransfer card printers. The cost for cardstock and ink is just more than $1.00 per card.
As a general rule, larger format cardstock will be a bit more expensive than the standard CR80 card size, either blank or preprinted.
A more affordable option, though, may be an ink jet printer that accepts a roll paper card stock. You’d sacrifice the durability of a plastic credential but would save with a more the cost-effective process.
These printers are used a lot for producing food or packaging labels. For credentials, though, the paper card would likely be inserted into a clear pouch, and then worn with a lanyard, bead chain or strap clip.
The price of ink jet roll printers start at about $1,300 – much less expensive than plastic card printers. The cost of the ink to print the credentials runs roughly 35 cents per 3.5” x 5.5” per card. As for blank paper card stock rolls, a ballpark cost is 10 cents each for 3.5” x 5.5”, based on an order of 10,000.
These units can print 450 cards per hour at a total cost per card of 45 cents. The ink jet printer option provides an outside-the-box alternative to large format IDs using affordable hardware.
Regardless of the card material or print method chosen, the large-format ID is meant to be displayed and will likely require some kind of wearable attachment.
Vanderbilt University Students will now be able to charge their Uber rides to their Commodore Cards thanks to a new campus card payment option. Vanderbilt is one of a host of early-adopter campuses across the country to partner with Uber as part of the company's new university initiative.
According to the Vanderbilt Hustler, numerous campus departments including campus police and the Dean of Students have backed the new option for students to charge rides to their campus card, hailing the initiative as a worthwhile student service. Students will be able to enjoy Uber's competitive fare rates, while also leveraging local transportation in a safe manner, the university said in a statement.
As an added safety benefit, students can share their ETA with friends and family via the app so they can follow the student's route and know when to expect their arrival.
To participate, students will need to first download the Uber app for their iOS or Android device and set up the account with a credit or debit card, as usual. Students will then be given the option to link their Commodore Card by selecting the “Payment" option in the Uber app and selecting “Campus Card." Students will need to be in the Nashville area to initially link their campus card account using a university email account and password.
Commodore Card balances will also be visible in the app when calling a car, and students will have to enter their destinations to verify that there are sufficient funds in their account to cover the trip. Additional funds can be added to the student account via CBORD's GET app.
The partnership with Uber was initiated by Vanderbilt Student Government's Campus Life Committee, who pitched the idea to Vanderbilt's card office manager. After initial test runs throughout the summer months, the Commodore Card officially became a payment option on August 15.
Uber has partnered with a host of other universities across the country where campus cards are also being accepted as forms of payment:
The North Dakota State Athletic Department has contracted SuperFanU, a student loyalty and engagement company, to launch the new Bison Rewards mobile app. The app will enable NDSU students to earn points and redeem rewards based on events and activities they attend and "check-in" to.
According to a university release, reward points can be used to earn prizes and exclusive offers from the North Dakota State Athletic Department. The app provides other information for students including athletic team schedules, school news, an opportunity to share photos through a 'fan cam,' and receive real-time information through the university's social media accounts in one consolidated feed.
NDSU selected SuperFanU as its loyalty program partner following deployments at numerous other DI, DII and DIII colleges and universities. The free-to-download Bison Rewards App is available for both Apple and Android devices.
Only active students are eligible for rewards and all participants must fully complete their Bison Rewards mobile app account profile with a valid student email address. The app uses geo-location to reward students for supporting and "checking-in" to North Dakota State athletics events. Upon arrival, students click “Check In” on the events tab, remain for the entirety of the event, and then receive reward points to their account.
Students can redeem some rewards at NDSU marketing tables located at home events, while other prizes may require students to redeem rewards at a sponsor’s location.
SuperFanU was founded in 2011 as a fan loyalty application platform designed for sports teams to engage and grow their fan base. The company customizes mobile apps for athletics departments and teams to incentivize and reward fans. The company currently works with more than 140 high schools, universities and professional teams.
The University of California, Berkeley is set to refine its transit pass system for students, phasing out the long-used Class Pass stickers adhered to Cal 1 Cards that signified Alameda-Contra Costa (AC) Transit eligibility.
As reported by The Daily Californian, beginning with the fall semester the stickers will be replaced by the new AC Transit Easypass, a personalized card that provides students with unlimited access to AC Transit, while also functioning as a reloadable Clipper Card for BART, CalTrain and San Francisco Muni transit.
The move is intended to make the transit experience simpler for students, and marks the campus’s latest effort to give students access to all local public transportation via their student ID cards.
Students can now receive the new personalized cards at the Cal 1 Card Office with online confirmation and their current student ID. The cards are also updated automatically at the end of each semester, removing long lines and wait times that previously built up when the stickers had to be renewed each semester. University officials do expect initial delays in the opening few weeks of the transition, which will include the distribution of 37,000 pre-printed cards to students.
According to an AC Transit spokesperson, the stickers posed problems for bus operations because they could not be deactivated and it was it was impossible to keep individuals from selling or copying the stickers.
Class Pass stickers were instituted in 1999 and were paid for by all students as part of their semester fees. The new cards will remain a fully-functioning Clipper Cards upon graduation. The campus has been trying to consolidate the Class Pass into an electronic form for seven years.
Initial plans were to have Cal 1 Cards with Clipper capabilities issued this summer. However, that launch date was pushed back following some all-to-familiar technological hurdles associated with existing keycard access and other card functions.
Getting the Cal 1 Card and Clipper card to function together resulted in “chip confusion," says one BART spokesperson. UC Berkeley will, however, begin to make other technological changes — including updating older access readers — as part of a larger two-year plan to make the Cal 1 Card compatible across campus and public transit systems.
Elsewhere, BART has begun its own program to facilitate transit discounts for college students via the campus card. In July, the authority approved the Gator Pass at San Francisco State University.
Today’s ID badges are very different from their predecessors. Laminated badges with a photo, name and job title have given way to advanced technology cards containing biometric templates and secure payment information. Companies want increasingly advanced credentials and they expect a lot from their card printing software.
“In the university space, for example, campuses have been migrating from mag stripes – to get in dorms and enable cashless vending – to smart cards that control everything on campus,” says Nils Wahlander, senior product marketing manager for HID Global.
These contemporary ID cards are being personalized inside and out, and the card personalization software has had to adapt. “They’re adding various tools to help with the enrollment process: capturing a photo, a signature or biometric information in the form of a fingerprint or even an iris scan,” Wahlander says. “The software now has to work with all these various vendors that sell those tools and integrate it into their product. That’s been the biggest change (to issuance software) over the last five years, adding in these various enrollment tools to enable a higher security ID.”
The look and use of ID badges have undergone a swift transition. “If you step back 10 or 20 years, a lot of the software didn’t even exist,” Wahlander says.
The work back then involved printing a plastic card with a few key elements of identifying information. Issuers and the issuance software were simply sending some basic data to a card printer to add to the card. “You could have used Microsoft Word at that point or Microsoft Access to keep track of all this information and just hit print,” Wahlander says.
Fast-forward a decade, and all this information – cardholder data, demographics, biometric templates, privileges and more – now lives in databases. “Issuers are capturing the various details – whether it’s from an HR database within Oracle, MySQL or a SQL server-type system – and they’re pulling it in to personalize the card,” Wahlander says.
Issuance software has had to evolve to keep pace with market needs, including strong security and encryption capabilities. “There’s a greater and greater focus on making sure the information that is sent from one location to another is securely transmitted and not tampered with,” says Connell Smith, vice president at Entrust Datacard. “The use of cards is part of the bigger ecosystem within an enterprise, and in a similar way the card printing software needs to connect to other systems. So, you’re seeing expansion into greater connectivity and more intelligent use of smart cards.”
The cardPresso software offered by Evolis was created in 2012 to accommodate clients that want advanced, easy to implement features. “Card printing software is an essential component of the product when selling a card printer,” says Vincent Menard, software product manager for Evolis. “It’s the best complement to the printer for decentralized card customization and printing. It helps users design their own card with their logo and pictures and to work with their own database.”
The race toward a smarter card has the competition constantly looking for ways to stand out in the market.
“Adding text, logos and images or capturing data from a camera or a signature pad is very easy,” Menard says. “Once the card design is created, users are able to print card batches thanks to the database operations management that allows them to print a limitless number of records in one printing job. Excel, Access or any ODBC-compliant databases are compatible with cardPresso.”
Card printer settings can be accessed directly from the software. For more advanced features, customers can choose between five upgrade editions depending on their needs.
Datacard’s TruCredential platform provides a range of solutions built to simplify the process of credentialing. “We have tools that can manage complex implementations driven by API’s or the other end of the spectrum in which customers who know nothing about credentialing step through a wizard in the software to create basic IDs,” says Eric Sander, senior product manager at Datacard. “The strength of the software is really the diversity of features and functions that help manage the complexity in the industry.”
Virginia Tech is bringing two new food trucks to campus to offer students another meal option, as well as provide food service to underserved or remote areas of campus.
According to the university, the Grillfield, made its debut at the Southgate area of campus this week, with campus employees being the first to test out the lunch offerings from the truck's new menu. The maiden luncheon was put on as a 'thank you' to employees of the university's Fleet Services who worked during the summer months to get the food truck up and running in time for the start of the fall semester.
???? It's here!! #TheGrillfield #VTFoodTruck #FoodProsim #startjumping pic.twitter.com/GOZA71ChIa
— VT Dining Services (@HokieDining) July 27, 2016
???? The Grillfield is looking sharp and ready to make the long journey to Blacksburg, just in time for fall semester! pic.twitter.com/Zi4R56yITD — VT Dining Services (@HokieDining) July 21, 2016
In addition to the food trucks, Virginia Tech maintains six dining halls, cafes and kiosks, but the new the food trucks will rotate locations to underserved areas, bringing additional dining options to students who can't make it to the brick-and-mortar dining locations.
Both trucks will feature what the university calls "compact menus," and will serve street food inspired by various cultures from around the world. The university gave students an opportunity to sample the food trucks' offerings as part of a trial and feedback period last year.
The university will add its second food truck soon, also in time for the fall semester, in the form of the Periodic Table.
???? Our second food truck, Periodic Table is looking slick and ready to make the long trek to Blacksburg!! #cantwait pic.twitter.com/FiT5tJ6hLB
— VT Dining Services (@HokieDining) August 5, 2016
Meal plans, cash and cards will all be accepted at the food trucks, with prices for items ranging from $5 to $8 before adding meal plan discounts. The addition of the new food trucks has thus far been met with positive feedback, gaining attention from both the Virginia Tech community and beyond.
Maybe we should have a college food truck rodeo. https://t.co/rejmN6KKzw
— VT Dining Services (@HokieDining) July 16, 2016
Two students at the University of Texas have developed a SnapChat-inspired app that is designed to help their peers better transition and settle into college life.
According to a report from CultureMap Houston, the Kickit app enables students to interact with one another, and incorporates familiar features to that of the overwhelmingly popular SnapChat app. Kickit is the brainchild of two Houston natives and soon-to-be seniors at the University of Texas, Eric Ngo and Ashar Malik.
Kickit works by enabling students to connect both with each other, and to the community to do things like set up meetings for pick-up sports games, create friend groups, find a study-buddy, or find someone to grab a bite to eat with. The app's developers hope that their creation will make the large university feel a little bit smaller by connecting people with similar interests without a lot of planning.
Events that are created within the app can either be shared privately to individual users, as can be done on SnapChat, or shared completely publicly -- similar to SnapChat's "MyStory" feature -- enabling all Kickit users to be reached.
For Ngo, and likely many other students, there's a deer in the headlights moment when making the transition to college life, and it's only more drastic the larger the university is. “Freshman year, they pamper you," Ngo said in an interview with CultureMap. "Once you become the sophomore, it seems like they just say ‘good luck,’ and forget about you."
For co-developer Malik, a passion for pick-up volleyball -- and subsequently inconsistent attendance -- helped to inspire some of the app's meet-up features. The developers decided to harness the feeling of uncertainty associated with trying to figure out what to do on campus, by having Kickit represent a kind of hub of activity for students to interact with.
The app is available for download for both iPhone and Android. For now, the developers hope to provide the University of Texas community the best experience possible with the app and eventually expand Kickit to other campuses.
