You may be working alongside one of them and not even realize it: a substitute teacher, an adjunct professor, or a special education contractor. They’re all contingent workers - employees hired for a time period of one year or less with a specific end date; they could be full-time or part-time. Over the past decade, a trend has emerged in academia of these contingent workers being hired, and we’ve seen it accelerate at an increasingly high rate over the past few years.

For us here at Identity Automation, we witnessed amazing growth in the education tech sector this year. It’s been quite a ride... from North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction’s roll out of its cloud entity platform to our irrefutable support of the Student Privacy Pledge.

Most college students use technology on a daily (if not hourly basis), and view it as an essential tool. Students use technology to complete a variety of tasks, especially in relation to coursework, such as research and turning in homework. Modern students expect their school’s technology to integrate seamlessly into their lives and make the learning experience easier. And that’s just the average college student; budding engineers and technological geniuses expect their college to provide them with up-to-date hardware and software solutions.

Last week our team attended the first “Building Bridges” Washington State Higher Education Technology Conference. The event brought together a diverse group of post-secondary education professionals focused on how technology can be used to maximize student success on campus and as they go into the workforce. Education IT staff, eLearning staff, library staff, institutional research staff, and campus faculty leadership were all in attendance. This broad representation of disciplines was fitting since the conference’s theme was “Building an environment of collaboration across boundaries”.