Cloud Storage and Collaboration

EDUCAUSE LEARNING INITIATIVE | MAY 2014

Scenario

Dev is a grad student studying the genetic causes of chronic fatigue syndrome. He is surprised at how the university’s installation of a new enterprise cloud storage platform has simplified his work by allowing him to share data with others at the university and elsewhere.

Because CFS is not a diagnosis but a description, Dev’s first task is to identify a consistent set of symptoms. A professor in his department, Dr. Bowman, has a current study on CFS and has collected anonymous questionnaires that list symptoms. Dev has permission to view the raw data and various analytics from the study. These are kept in a file housed in the university’s cloud storage and collaboration service.

Dev has also been working with a public DNA testing service where clients have agreed to the anonymous use of their data in medical and scientific studies. He wants to see the raw DNA data of those who self-describe as having CFS. The testing service, which uses its own cloud platform, has granted Dev permission to view specific data files on a read-only basis any time he has logged in through the university’s identity system.

Dev saves all the work he does on his project in a folder shared with his advisor, allowing Bowman to see his project as it progresses. When Bowman sees the direction Dev is taking, he suggests Dev contact Dr. Sanchez-Navarro, a geneticist at another university working in a similar area. Dev invites her to share his work folder now that he has identified symptoms and associated them with particular genes. He invites Bowman and Sanchez-Navarro to comment directly in his evolving document about anything in the study they find curious, strange, or questionable.

Near the end of his project, Dev forms the hypothesis that CFS could manifest when the uptake of a naturally occurring amino acid is hindered, a syndrome which appears to be genetically linked. He posits his theory and invites comments, sending links to three more experts, requesting their input. He hopes he has identified an area that calls for further study.

1 What is it?

In the early days of cloud storage, administrators in higher education were often uneasy about the privacy and security of university data not stored on their physical premises. Yet for individual users, public cloud storage presented an opportunity for easy access from any device, automatic backup, and easy sharing. As a result, many faculty, staff, and students opened their own accounts to manage personal content and take advantage of these convenient options. Since that time, higher education has seen a move from consumer-level adoption of cloud services to enterprise deployment of full-scale cloud storage and collaboration platforms. Due largely to cooperation among vendors, education organizations, and colleges and universities, enterprise services can now offer the convenience of cloud storage and collaboration services with single sign-on through the university’s identity management system, integration with other campus services, and contractual assurances of privacy, security, and uptime. The situation today represents an effective combination of user-level control with enterprise-level support and access.

2 How does it work?

An institution might contract directly with a cloud storage provider, or a group of institutions could develop contracts and purchasing services through programs such as Internet2 NET+. In either case, individual users can create an account using their university credentials through integration with institutional identity systems. Files stored in the cloud can be accessed and edited through the web, and file owners can typically control who can access and edit those files. Most common file types are supported, and the cloud service keeps track of changes and versions. Alternatively, files can be downloaded and edited locally and uploaded or synced later. Depending on the service used and the sensitivity of data involved, access might be limited to those within the university domain or granted to any user, allowing collaboration across institutional boundaries while keeping files secure and private.

3 Who’s doing it?

Many large institutions have implemented enterprise cloud storage. Indiana University has more than 50,000 accounts using the Internet2 NET+ Box platform; the University of Michigan has a similar number of accounts through Box and Google Drive. At the University of Notre Dame, more than 50% of the campus uses Box regularly. Numerous other institutions have deployments of Amazon Web Services, OneDrive, or other platforms or have deployed cloud-based learning management systems that include file storage and collaboration features. At Indiana University, a swim instructor uses an iPad to record on-the-spot critiques of strokes and stores those files online, where students can view them immediately or revisit them later. At the Prison Creative Arts Project, sponsored by the University of Michigan, prospective exhibitors submit applications with attached samples, which are reviewed by a committee that includes individuals not formally associated with the university. Because the artwork often results in large files, e-mail was unsuitable, and the solution was to place the applications in a shared folder on the university’s cloud service so that members of the selection committee could review all the applications, with attached art, in one single, convenient location.

4 Why is it significant?

With cloud storage, account holders can access their accounts from anywhere and review, amend, and organize their files at any time, from any device. Cloud-based files enable collaboration, automatically syncing changes from multiple participants. The cloud offers a single location for convenient maintenance of data that might otherwise be fragmented into different versions scattered across multiple devices. Enterprise platforms ensure that collaboration is private and secure, even across organizations. In business offices, staff with appropriate credentials can share and review invoices or drop purchase orders into a single shared file for review, approval, and subsequent processing.

5 What are the downsides?

Students and faculty who already have private accounts on public cloud storage may resist moving their files to a different service. Some will use the enterprise service while continuing to keep some files elsewhere, which could lead to versioning problems. Teams may need to set ground rules about using local desktop copies of files. Where classes, work groups, and study teams share files on a cloud service, questions could arise about ownership of the saved data. Some administrators will still feel more comfortable housing the most sensitive files on servers inside the campus firewall. Faculty and students who leave an institution must remember to remove personal files from the enterprise cloud storage before they go, and administrators must put controls in place to ensure institutional data does not depart as well.

6 Where is it going?

Enterprise cloud storage platforms are still evolving to meet the needs of the higher education community. Efforts are under way to address the need to store sensitive data in compliance with federal and other regulations. Over the next few years, new APIs should allow for smoother integration with other services and with university-developed applications. Currently on the higher education wish list is extended capability for metadata to provide more context and the integration of strong data-loss-prevention tools. Because some administrators remain concerned about the security of data not stored on campus servers, one solution might be to build an interface that would allow files to be saved not just to the cloud but to onsite servers as well. Already efforts are under way for platforms such as Box and Google Drive to integrate with each other and with campus systems and servers..

7 What are the implications for teaching and learning?

The deployment of enterprise cloud storage and collaboration services has introduced new opportunities for how academic assignments are conceived, completed, and submitted. Instructors can invite students to store assignments in the cloud, where faculty can check progress and offer feedback. Faculty and students can converse through comments in documents. Group projects and research efforts can share documents, chats, and images in a single location. Group accounts enable collaborative work that can continue when face-to-face meetings are not feasible. Where appropriate, students can critique each other’s work while instructors monitor who has viewed or downloaded files. Students can address academic work using applications and practices they use in their personal lives. Enterprise cloud storage may even offer solutions to those who hesitate to use particular resources for teaching due to copyright concerns—in platforms where a multimedia file can be set as read only, students can view copyrighted work without the ability to download it or keep a copy. This technology provides the opportunity for students, faculty, and researchers to bring their work wherever they go, access it instantly, and collaborate with colleagues in a private and secure digital environment.

educause.edu/ELI | ELI 7 Things You Should Know About ... ™

© 2014 EDUCAUSE. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit membership association created to support those who lead, manage, and use information technology to benefit higher education. The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative is an EDUCAUSE community committed to the advancement of learning through the innovative application of technology. For more information about ELI, including membership, please contact us at info@educause.edu.