The University of Sydney has established four Learning Hubs in a three-year project supported by the Federal Government's 2008 Teaching and Learning Capital Fund.
The technology component of the project had some $6 million in Federal funding and involved the rollout of new servers, storage, virtual desktop infrastructure and 600 new Dell PCs.
Applications are served from Sydney University's four-year-old data centre and displayed in an "App Store" on students' virtual desktops via Citrix technology.
The Learning Hubs are open to all university students and feature "pods" with large, wall-mounted monitors for group work.
The University of Sydney is upgrading its wireless and wired networks to address a 60 percent year-on-year growth in demand for internet services.
Student surveys revealed a shortage of power points; the university installed hanging power boards and numerous wall sockets to address this.
The university is piloting a BYOD program that could allow all students to access their virtual desktops from personal devices from 2013.
The University of Sydney has established four Learning Hubs in a three-year project supported by the Federal Government's 2008 Teaching and Learning Capital Fund.