Card, mobile credential, payment and security
The price of the SlugCard -- the University of California, Santa Cruz's student ID card -- will increase for faculty, staff, and students to a flat fee of $25 for all card replacements. This marks the first fee increase for replacement student IDs at the university since 2012.
According to an official university release, the change will take effect July 1, 2019 and will apply to to all new and replacement ID cards for students, faculty, and staff. The price for all new student ID cards, as well as faculty and staff badges will also carry a $25 fee.
The new, flat fee replaces a previous pricing structure that charged differently based on the reason for the card replacement. Previously, lost or stolen ID cards carried a $20 cash or check replacement fee, while lost or stolen cards plus a new photo cost $25.
For damaged or broken ID cards, however, the replacement fee was just $10 cash or check to exchange, and $15 to exchange with a new photo. This price was also applied to instances of exchanges for name, college or photo changes.
According to the university's card services website, the new price increase on the SlugCard is the result of investments in new technology, increasing supply costs, and the need to simplify the existing ID card pricing structure.
Adding to Allegion's support of Transact Mobile Credentials in Apple Wallet, the company's Schlage AD Series locks now fully support contactless student IDs on iPhone and Watch.
Allegion's Schlage AD-300 and AD-400 commercial electronic locks now fully enable students to open doors in residence halls and other secure spaces with just their iPhone or Apple Watch. Macon, Georgia's Mercer University was the first university to launch Transact Mobile Credentials in Apple Wallet using Allegion locks.
As part of Mercer's mobile credential deployment, the university opted for the Schlage AD-400 lockset to be installed at openings across campus and is leveraging MIFARE DESFire EV2 contactless technology.
This new capability is specific to Schlage AD-300 and AD-400 electronic locks, which feature built-in credential readers and access control sensors for simplified installation.
“We’ve seen the shift where people are becoming less dependent on cards and more dependent on their mobile phones, and it’s no surprise that college students are embracing this change,” says Jeff Koziol, business development manager, campus software partner at Allegion. “Allegion is proud to support this digital and mobile transformation in a way that improves security and the student experience across campuses.”
Contactless student IDs in Apple Wallet provide added security in addition to convenience. Universities can remotely issue credentials over-the-air, and credentials are protected by multi-factor authentication and can also be remotely deactivated by the student or university.
“To properly serve tech-savvy students, we need to deliver solutions that meet their expectations of a frictionless and elegant experience," says David Marr, CEO of Transact. "Mobile is central to that experience. Transact is excited to have the support of our partner community, like that of Allegion, to enhance and expand a native NFC mobile experience across campuses.”
The Schlage AD-400 Series wireless locks were designed to reduce installation costs on interior access-controlled doors like student dorm rooms, faculty offices, classrooms and lab spaces, while offering adaptability to support future evolutions in technology. Both the AD-400 and AD-300 locks are available in cylindrical, mortise, mortise deadbolt and exit trim chassis options, and integrate into a number of popular electronic access control systems.
HID Global's Director of Business Development, Education Solutions, Brett St. Pierre provides a rundown of the company's solution suite for the higher education vertical.
Hear first about HID's vision for mobile access on campus, starting with the company's Origo mobile identity solution. Origo is a subscription-based system that enables campuses to access and manage a trusted ecosystem of cloud-connected access control devices, applications and trusted mobile identities.
HID has been in the mobile access realm for some time now, particularly in its work with Bluetooth. St. Pierre discusses the company's work with Bluetooth, demos the access control use case for mobile identity, and discusses how campuses are making the move to mobile.
St. Pierre also discusses the company's continuing focus on card technologies, and cites some of HID's recent acquisitions and other investments around the card technology sector.
HID also offers biometric solutions to support university services like dining plans and access to a range of environments on campus.
Finally, St. Pierre discusses two more of the company's acquisitions, Mercury Security and BluVision and how they are helping HID to deliver greater services to its customers. The acquisition of Mercury Security not only brings with it the massive install base of Mercury readers and controllers nationwide, but has enabled HID to better manage those hardware pieces and statuses.
BluVision, meanwhile, brings a location services focus to HID's portfolio with its experience with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and the enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) market. With the added location services expertise, HID has expanded its real-time asset tracking capabilities, IoT offerings, extended its cloud services for access control and related applications.
Universities are constantly finding new ways to update their student-facing services and are finding success by mirroring some of the transaction experiences students see beyond campus. As it pertains to campus dining specifically, more universities are looking to self-service kiosk solutions underpinned by the campus card system as a means to offer greater flexibility and convenience when placing an order.
Discussing this topic in greater detail, CBORD’s “Dynamic Dining with Self-Serve Ordering” webinar delves into how a university can can leverage self-service solutions to streamline the dining and meal ordering processes for both a campus and its students.
Webinar attendees will hear from Scott Jerabek, senior product manager for CBORD, as he provides an overview of the self-service hardware options available to universities, and how kiosks can be configured into an established dining program.
Also presenting on the webinar will be Keith Curtachio, director of information technology for the Faculty Student Association at the University at Buffalo. The University at Buffalo has experienced significant success with its implementation of self-service kiosks and online ordering through GET CBORD Student and Oracle.
CR80News recently caught up with both Scott and Keith to discuss the topic of self-service dining solutions ahead of the webinar event.
“Interest in self-service ordering, self-checkout and multi-channel ordering in general has grown tremendously in the past few years,” says CBORD’s Jerabek. “Universities are turning to these solutions to address challenges like labor shortages and costs, speed of service and throughput, and to meet student expectations.”
Universities are turning to self-service dining solutions to address challenges like labor shortages and costs, speed of service and throughput, and to meet student expectations.
“We see opportunity for self-service in quick-service restaurants, quick casual, multi-concept dining, C-stores with prepared food, as well as attended and unattended grab-n-go locations,” says Jerabek. “It really depends on the needs of the particular operation, having a compatible menu, and a university's goals for the business.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but students love a mobile device. Moreover, campus services that can be packed into a mobile format, like a kiosk interface, simply resonate with modern students.
The story is no different for the University at Buffalo. “For the most part we've observed that many students don’t want to talk with someone to order,” says Curtachio. “They're also growing more used to this type of service at their favorite franchise operations away from campus. Our students want the same experience on- and off-campus so we needed to meet that demand."
“Separately, we’re also facing a labor shortage in the food industry," adds Curtachio. "So by using various customer self-service technologies, we can reduce the need for employment positions for order taking and payment, and instead train personnel for production and fulfillment.”
Curtachio and the team at Buffalo decided to deploy the Micros WS6 kiosks in a new dining operation at the university’s medical school. “We wanted a way to streamline the dining process and allow a multi-point ordering format,” he says. “The kiosk orders all go through our Micros system and printers, along with GET online and mobile app orders.”
“In this dining location we have extensive grab-and-go options, so we opted for kiosk orders to just include item selection and suspend the payment transaction until checkout,” Curtachio explains. “The kiosk order is then recalled at the cashier who can add additional items and take payments. GET orders, meanwhile, are pre-paid and sealed in specially marked bags for quick pick-up.”
The challenge for a campus considering self-service dining solutions is to properly evaluate existing operations to determine what can be added seamlessly to legacy services.
The goal with self-service kiosks is really to balance ordering, production and wait times for the best customer experience.
“We have a number of areas that have long lines, but kiosks would only increase stresses on production beyond capacity, so in that case the line is the throttle,” explains Curtachio. “The goal is really to balance ordering, production and wait times for the best customer experience.”
CBORD’s Jerabek offers some starting questions for campuses considering self-service dining solutions:
It’s important to think about the value proposition for a customer to use a kiosk, as well. “If kiosk orders are prepared after orders taken in person across the counter, the benefit to using the kiosk in the first place is diminished,” explains Jerabek. “Self-service orders must be prepared in the same queue as if it were taken over the counter. Ultimately, self-service has to be convenient for your customer to use it.”
As Jerabek explains, it’s also important to determine which kind of kiosk deployment makes the most sense based on the environment. “Every deployment consists of three basic pillars: ordering, payment, and pick-up,” he says. “A campus must determine whether a particular operation is best suited to an ordering kiosk either with or without payment processing capabilities.”
For more on self-service dining solutions, deployment strategies for universities, and the full story on how the University at Buffalo is leveraging self-service kiosks and mobile ordering on campus, tune in for CBORD’s “Dynamic Dining with Self-Serve Ordering” webinar.
A growing number of universities are getting creative with their use of leftover dining funds. Whether through on-campus food pantries, or more advanced meal donations to peers underpinned by the campus card system, unused meal funds are being used in far more efficient ways.
Pennsylvania's Bloomsburg University has long been using its leftover dining funds to stock the shelves of the local food pantry, and donates more than a ton of food and thousands of dollars in meal-plan funds each year. And a more unique use of the donations, according to the Altoona Mirror, is in the Bloomsburg Food Cupboard's bagging of breakfast, lunch and snacks for elementary students from under privileged families to take home each weekend.
Now in its fifteenth year, Bloomsburg students with meal plan “FLEX” funds left in their accounts at the end of the academic year can choose to make a donation, rather than simply spend the money down. The university allows the Flex dollars to roll over from fall to spring, but any leftover funds are forfeited with the close of the spring semester.
As is typically the case, many students will stock up on campus c-store goods like water, snacks or soda to drain any leftover funds, but an increasing number of Bloomsburg students are opting to donate their remaining Flex cash to the university's food-service partner Aramark. It's Aramark that then purchases food to fill “Panther Packs,” the bagged lunches and snacks for local elementary schoolers.
In the last two years alone, students Flex dollar donations have contributed more than $15,000 worth of donated meals.
Some 65% of students in Bloomsburg’s Memorial Elementary School are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, so the Flex dollar donation program is certainly helping to provide some needed support to local community. Much of the donated meals are used to provide bagged lunches and snacks for children of eligible families on weekends.
The donation program has grown to feed somewhere between 350 to 400 households per week, and is providing 213 Panther Packs each week during the elementary school year.
Tulane University is moving to a new campus emergency notification system, changing from previous provider, Rave Alert, to Everbridge. Everbridge offers a suite of safety alert systems for a number of verticals including higher education, with campus deployments at a number of universities including UCLA and Rochester Institute of Technology.
According to an official university release, Tulane will transition to the new alert system -- which is designed to keep the campus community safe and informed during emergency or crisis situations -- this week. Donald Veals, Tulane’s emergency and preparedness response manager, says that all students, faculty and staff will be automatically enrolled in the system.
When an emergency or threat is identified, the university’s emergency preparedness and response team can use Everbridge to send out pertinent information to the Tulane community using the mass notification capability within the Everbridge system and recommend the best course of action.
Notifications will be sent via phone call, text message and email, and Tulane is encouraging all Students, faculty and staff to download the free Everbridge mobile app in order to receive the emergency push alerts directly to their mobile devices.
Similar to other safety app offerings, Everbridge also enables students to send check-in notifications to campus security if they are in vulnerable situations, such as walking alone across campus late at night. If a student does not send the check-in notification at the prescribed interval time it takes to get to their destination, the Tulane Police Department will be dispatched to the student’s last known location to ensure their safety.
The app also features a panic button that sends an SOS request to the Tulane University Police Department.
An email will be sent to the Tulane campus community including instructions on how to download the Everbridge app via single sign-on. Once logged in to the app, it's recommended that users allow push notifications to ensure they receive the emergency messages.
Touchnet sales engineer, Dave Falldien, provides a detailed rundown of the Touchnet OneCard VIP solution and how it supports the full range of on-campus student transactions. In the video hear about the environments that a university can leverage OneCard VIP to create and manage their own events, deploy portable POS readers for cashless purchases, as well as support student photo upload.
OneCard VIP is Touchnet's all-encompassing transaction system for colleges and universities. From student ID verification and library access, to parking validation and purchases, OneCard underpins the gamut of transactions on campus.
Event tracking is just one of the services that OneCard VIP supports on campus, but as Falldien explains it's an important utility for both the campus and its students. In this video, you'll get a good look at the OneCard VIP interface, how it's used for event tracking, and see a demo of the solution as it would work in a real-world application.
Falldien also offers a case study from a university that was able to use event tracking through OneCard VIP to streamline a campus laser tag event that had previously experienced scheduling issues without a tracking solution in place.
In addition to event access, Falldien also demos the company's portable POS reader that enables cashless and contactless payment transactions across campus. Ideal for renting out to university clubs and student groups, the reader on show helps to bridge the cashless payment gap that can often happen with on-campus purchases.
Another utility built into OneCard VIP is student photo upload. Watch as Falldien explains this service, how it can save the card office and students headaches at the time of card issuance, and offers a demo.
The University of Kentucky Athletics last year implemented a mobile ticketing solution that moves all football and basketball game tickets to students' mobile devices. Now, the university has decided to double down on the system and renew mobile athletic ticketing for the coming year.
According to an official university release, the student ticketing process was developed using feedback from students that were requesting a mobile ticketing option and easier access to tickets in general. University of Kentucky Athletics also consulted data from the Southeastern Conference’s annual fan experience surveys, conducted site visits with peer institutions, and held on-campus meetings with its Student Government, Dean of Students Office, the President’s Office and Ticketmaster prior to launching the mobile ticketing solution.
UK will again partner with Experience to provide the mobile ticketing system. Through Experience, the ticketing process enables students to purchase and access tickets easily from a mobile device, removing the need to visit the UK Ticket Office or participate in lotteries to secure tickets. Students claim mobile tickets to each home game during a designated window through the UK Athletics app.
UK offers the following ticket packages for its students:
Admission to all other regular season UK Athletics events other than football and men’s basketball games will remain free for students. For those events, students will continue to present their valid WildCard, the UK student ID, at the gate for seating.
Throughout the season, students can access their pass through the UK Athletics app. Pass purchasers will then be prompted to claim a mobile ticket during a designated window prior to each home game.
On game day, students with both season passes and single-game tickets will be given a wristband or seat location upon arrival. This will allow students who claim the same areas and enter the venue together to sit together. Tickets may be electronically transferred to other students through the UK Athletics app to allow greater flexibility.
The university is also encouraging students to download BBN Rewards, UK Athletics' official student rewards app. Through the app, students can earn points by checking into games, and later redeem those points for rewards like Nike gear, and exclusive UK Athletics experiences. The BBN Rewards leaderboard is also being used to establish ticket claim priority for men’s basketball games.
Paciolan, a college athletics ticketing service provider, has announced that it will be able to add contactless tickets to Apple Wallet and enable fans to enter stadiums with just an iPhone or Apple Watch.
The first universities to offer the contactless ticket solution will begin with the fall 2019 football season at Baylor University, Louisiana State University, Michigan State University, University of Mississippi, Georgia Tech, and Rutgers University.
Students and fans will both be able to enter stadiums by placing their iPhone or Apple Watch near a contactless reader, eliminating the need to print paper tickets. Providing NFC-enabled tickets is the next step in Paciolan’s mobile ticketing strategy to help reduce fraud at the gate and assist colleges in better understanding who attends their games.
“iPhone and Apple Watch make going to college sports games easier than ever,” says Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “We’ve said our goal is to replace the physical wallet and students and fans will love the convenience and security of having their tickets right on the Apple devices they carry with them every day.”
Similar to the process of adding a boarding pass to Wallet, iPhone and Apple Watch users will receive their purchased athletics tickets via text message and can then add them to Apple Wallet. Fans will also receive a push notification on their device's lock screen when they arrive at the stadium, giving them an easy prompt to access their ticket in Apple Wallet.
“Contactless ticketing with Apple Pay is a fantastic win for fans and schools alike, and Paciolan is pleased to bring it to our community,” says Keith White, Chief Technology Officer at Paciolan. “It improves security and provides game-changing data capability by increasing the known fan base and giving the ticket office key insights to drive business decisions and maximize revenue.”
Contactless ticketing leverages NFC technology and works with handheld scanners, pedestals and turnstiles. Transferring or gifting tickets to friends and family is also supported through each university's official athletics website.
Issuing contactless tickets can significantly reduce fraud risk by rendering screenshots useless and eliminating the use of printed PDF tickets with insecure barcode technology.
Paciolan also gives athletics venues access to the full custody chain of each digital ticket including cases where tickets are re-sold on the secondary market or transferred to another user. These controls help to reduce "anonymous" event attendance, giving athletic programs the ability to personalize the fan experience and more accurately communicate with attendees about future offers and games.
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi could soon be shuttling students around campus in a driverless bus, and using student ID cards to allow access to the service.
As reported by local NBC affiliate KRIS 6, the driverless shuttle service expected to be free for all students and faculty, but riders will need to present a valid Sandollar student ID card to ride. The shuttle will be a joint effort between the university and the Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority.
According to reports earlier this year, the Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority states that talks had already taken place with Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi about starting a pilot program to test autonomous transportation. The plan has always been for the driverless shuttle service to be fully functioning on the TAMUCC campus by the end of the calendar year.
During the initial Autonomous Vehicle Pilot Program, the driverless shuttles will travel along a pre-determined route on the TAMUCC campus only, not on public roads around greater Corpus Cristi.
Each shuttle will be able to transport up to 15 passengers at a time, and will leverage GPS technology to follow the set campus route.
The Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority is reportedly working with Navya, a French company, to deliver the shuttle service with plans to be up and running with the beginning of the fall semester of 2019.
Navya has a stable of university campus deployments for its driverless shuttle solution. Predominantly launched on campuses across Europe, Asia and Australia, the company does have a successful deployment here in the States at the University of Michigan.
