The report, titled “Distance Learning’s Impact on Education IT,” analyzes anonymized data from approximately 5.1 million Absolute-enabled devices across 10,000 schools and districts. It provides key insights on pain points with device and application use during remote learning — knowledge to help IT teams better understand and act on the tech challenges facing K–12 education in this unique school year.
Based on the data and research gathered for the report, Absolute highlights four key takeaways:
- IT teams are doing more with less.
- They are facing significant challenges with tracking and managing devices, software and applications remotely.
- Remote learning has created new tech support challenges, taking away valuable instructional time and causing teacher frustration.
- Network-based security controls aren’t enough to protect end users in remote environments.
Here’s a closer look at their some of their findings and analysis.
IT Teams Face New Challenges in Remote Environments
Absolute found that IT staff in both large and small school districts are supporting remote learning on tighter budgets, with fewer resources. While federal stimulus packages may help in the short term, long-term budgets are still uncertain for many, according to the report. Schools are facing increased expenses; experts point to $500 incremental increases per student in distance learning costs for this school year.
IT teams are now managing more devices too. A solid majority (80 percent) of schools have purchased or plan to purchase more devices for remote learning, the report notes. But as more devices go home for longer periods of time, IT visibility into device management and security has decreased. For instance, between January and May 2020, 20 percent of all educational devices have gone dark or were not online, according to Absolute’s data. Schools also have had an average of 30 devices go missing at some point in the last nine months.