Case Study | Google Apps for Education

Khon Kaen University migrates students, faculty and alumni to Google Apps, saving IT resources and over 15 million THB. Institution Established in 1964, Khon Kaen University (KKU) is a large public institution located in the northeastern region of Thailand. The university consists of roughly 43,500 students, 12,000 faculty and staff and over 100,000 alumni. KKU’s motto is Caring, Connecting, Creating, Happiness. Through encouraging collaboration and creativity among faculty and students, KKU hopes to realize its vision of becoming a leading research institution. At a Glance What they wanted to do • Provide a lifelong email service for students, faculty and alumni • Improve the communication infrastructure to support research and collaboration without incurring overwhelming costs What they did • Integrated Google Apps with existing services like Moodle and Cacoo to create an innovative technological classroom experience for their students What they accomplished • Realized over 15 million Thai baht in savings, to use towards providing 100% wifi coverage on campus • Integrated Google Apps with Moodle under Single Sign On for maximal efficiency 

Challenge There was one glaring obstacle in the way of KKU pursuing its research goals: the lack of an adequate IT infrastructure to support students and staff. Email was hosted on the university’s on-premise server, but capacity was limited and only staff accounts were hosted. The lack of quality internal spam filters forced the IT team to face the cost of purchasing additional blockers, and furthermore, the lack of a standard email system for students and staff made communication and collaboration difficult for the campus community. Faculty were turning away from the KKU mail server and forwarding email to alternate clients, like Gmail. When the alumni association appealed to the administration for a means to interact with the university post-graduation, the IT team knew a campus-wide communication solution was needed. It was time for change. Solution Khon Kaen’s IT team saw Google as their preferred solution for a variety of reasons. First, with no cost associated and considerable capacity, Gmail would allow the university to save the 15 million Thai baht that would be required to begin increasing their on-premise server capacities to host student email. Next, Google Apps single-sign on was efficient, easy-to-use and could be integrated with services like Moodle. The IT team was also intrigued by the suite of products offered, including Docs and Calendar, all offering new means for collaboration and creativity.

“The support Google provided and the APIs available made it easy to completely integrate Apps for Education with our existing system.“ —Denpong Soodphakdee, Vice President, Academic and Information Technology

Once the decision was made to go Google, KKU’s IT team worked with the available Google APIs to have the new system up and running in less than 2 months. The incoming freshman in 2012 had an opportunity during orientation to sign up for their new KKUmail Google accounts, obtainingan email address with a generator designed by the KKU IT team, and have access to the full Apps Suite before even beginning university. The timeline

About Google Apps for Education

Google Apps for Education is a free suite of hosted communication and collaboration applications designed for schools and universities. Google Apps includes Gmail (webmail services), Google Calendar (shared calendaring), Google Docs (online document, spreadsheet, presentation, and form creation and sharing) Google Video (secure and private video sharing – 10GB free) and Google Sites (team website creation with videos, images, gadgets and documents integration), as well as administrative tools, customer support, and access to APIs to integrate Google Apps with existing IT systems. For more information visit www.google.com/apps/edu “I can greatly increase the communication and social tools available to my students with Google Sites, Google Calendar, Google Documents and all of these tools can be used together.“ —Numpon Mahayotsanun, Associate Director Institute of Learning and Teaching Innovation

from deployment to the migration of the entire student body to Google Apps for Education was a mere 3 months, thanks to an IT feature necessitating a Google login for students to access their grades. The IT team created a number of resources to help the campus community ease into the transition, including a Google Users Group, an IT support email address and a website with Google Apps for Edu tips and tricks for students. Vice President Denpong points out that students will really begin to make use of the products now available to them when they are used in classrooms, by professors. As a result, KKU has scheduled Google trainings for all faculty and an additional training for student leaders who can later inform their peers. Assistant Professor of Architecture Praphantpong Chongpaitiyutt already has his students making use of Google Apps for Education. Students upload their sketches and notes to Google Docs, where Professor Praphantpong connects them with peers and even experts who can comment and collaborate on their work. Benefits The benefits of switching to Google Apps for Education were immediately evident to KKU. Student usage of email increased, IT costs decreased dramatically, and the ability of professors to communicate efficiently and effectively with their students promises exciting possibilities in classrooms in the future. Students, faculty, alumni and the KKU IT team are all excited about the possibilities for Caring, Connecting, Creating and Happiness using Google Apps for Education.

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