There isno getting away from it -this hybrid world we find ourselves in is rapidly changing theway we interactand share data,and allforthe better. Asinstitutionsof higher educationexperience this permanent shift from the traditional on-campus experience to flexible digital environments, theyhave new pressures todeliver a user experience that feels frictionless andyetis stillfamiliar tostudents, faculty,and administration. The growth ofartificial intelligence (AI) holds great promise in this area too.Together, AIandflexible hybrid environmentsprovidethe key to truly frictionless experiences andbetter student engagement. 

With the full acceptance of aflexible work culture among the private sector, the public sector isfinding it difficult to enforce and determine the right path to in-person vs. flexible learningforstudents and hybrid work options for faculty andadministration. To overcome this, higher education institutions arelookingat theirclassroom and administration experiences and are seeking to create frictionless, culture boosting environments that students,faculty,and staff alike eagerly desire to be an active part of, rather than be forced to accept a rigid approach one way or the other.  

Students are also demanding faster, more personalized digital engagement. Withthe impending2025 enrollment cliff, creating these frictionless environments and experiences will bring students to those campuses, where both in-person or virtual experiences are intertwined.That's why experience is now more important to the success of an institution than ever.  

This new environment institutions find themselves having to enable holds a tremendous amount of opportunity - but only if they take steps right now to leverage the generational change that AI,flexiblelearning,and hybrid workingsolutions offer them. 

AI and flexible hybrid environments are new to education, but not Cisco

AI is not new to Cisco. We've beenleveragingit for decades for audio, video, natural language understanding, andanalytics to create unrivaled experiences that engage users.Butthere is something new: advancements in large language models and generative AI. This is allowingus to deliver unrivaled collaboration experiences andelevate all users (students, faculty,and staff) to higher levels of interaction. 

AI is core to our entire collaboration portfolio, from?Webex for Education?to devices like?headsets,?phones, and our award-winning?room systems. AI is also deeply embedded in our Customer Experience portfolio to reduce the length of time to get to the right person andinformationefficiently.So, while AI is the latest buzzword across social media,Cisco'sdecades of investments and experience with AI are helpingcolleges and universitiesoptimize collaboration, reimagine workspaces, and maximizeexperiences. 

For example, Webexfor Education is underpinned by the industry's best AI, security, and manageability for amore frictionless experience: 

• Purpose-built AI?for audio and video intelligence that promotes greater inclusion and well-being. Video intelligence features such as facial and gesture detection, which let you communicate without saying a word. 
• Be Right Back?knows when you're distracted. By leveraging our facial detection technology, Webex will sense when you step away and replace your video feed with a sign that says, "be right back." 
• Smart lighting?which automatically adjusts the video lighting based on the time of day or even the weather to ensure you look your best in any environment. 
• Super resolution?that delivers high-definition meetings without high-definition bandwidth,even in low bandwidth conditions. And no choppiness, even with packet loss. 
• Background noise removal?technology that has removed over 96 billion minutes (about 180,000 years) of background noise. We're extending this capability to?PSTN calls?with Webex Calling, so users on both ends of the call be heard clearly. 
• New featuresleveraging A.I.are added monthly, such as Cinematic A.I. editing inreal-time to make every lecture feellike a movie. 

AI and Webex deliver holistic experiences for all

From Microsoft Teams and Zoom, toimmersive rooms, Ciscodevices are opening upa whole new world of multiplatform collaboration for ourhigher education customers.  

• Our new Cinematic meetings brings multi-camera support that automatically transitions between shots to make sure everyone is seen and heard at justthe right moment. And when rooms have glass walls, the new Meeting Zones feature lets you define a visual perimeter for the meeting, and AI will focus only on people within that perimeter. This keeps yourareas and information secure. 
• Cisco'sRoomOSdelivers a true frictionless experience allowingfaculty,staff, and students to seamlessly usethe tools they want, but with all the power of Cisco A.I., from the touch of a buttonor even synchronizedfor a personalized experience.  

In addition,?Cisco Board Pro, plus other Cisco devices and peripherals, are now certified for Microsoft Teams Rooms. This includes support for our AI-enabled audio and video intelligence technologies to drive better user experiences in Microsoft Teams Rooms. Plus,?Webex Contact Center is now certified for Microsoft Teams. 

AI and Hybridlearningfor student and faculty engagement

AI and hybridlearning solutions have also risen to meet a new bar of instant and personalized service. Something everyone (faculty,student,staff) expects is for the colleges' digital environment to know who they are, when to be proactive, and when to personalize engagement. Notjust once, but across theirentire interaction, and while preservingtheir privacy and protecting their data.  

To maximize the value of AI and hybrid work for oureducation customers, we've powered up?Webex Contact Center with higher level machine learning?capabilities: 

• Topic analysis?built using an AI large language model (LLM) that surfaces trends for why customers call the contact center, providing actionable insights. 
• Proprietary agent answers?offers AI-enabled recommendations in real-time to agents from a knowledge base built from customer queries. 
• Intelligent chat summaries?automatically summarizes an entire chatbot conversation delivered at the point of handoff to a live agent. 

At Cisco, we're leveraging our decades of experience working with AI and hybrid learningsolutions to create true digital environments for education that deliverfamiliar and frictionlessstudent, faculty,and staff engagements. By actively embedding purpose-built AI into all our hybrid learningsolutions, we're redefining and optimizing collaboration while reimagining the campus classroom and maximizing student engagement across the whole digital education environment, wherever that may be. 

 Additional resources

• Smart Campus of the Future: Creating Student Experiences through Technology 
• Improve Incident Response with a Collaboration Platform You Can Trust 
• Webex Connect | Latest Channel Updates and AI Innovations| Latest Channel Updates and AI Innovations 
• Delivering customer experience for the next normal with Webex Contact Center 
• Cisco solutions for Higher Education 

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