As intuitive to use as an iPhone: why University of Dundee students benefit from Box
CTO Paul Saunders tells Computing how students have become 'champions' for Box use at Dundee
The University of Dundee has offered students Box cloud collaboration tools and the software has proved popular because it's easy and intuitive to use.
That's according to Paul Saunders, chief technology officer (CTO) and IT director at the University of Dundee who told Computing how Box is being enthusiastically used by students to aid collaboration on both academic and extracurricular activities.
"The rollout of Box tools began in March this year, with the IT department initially working with groups in the university who were most interested in the software," Saunders explained, before describing how the university's Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification are "absolute champions" for Box.
"They use Box for pretty much everything, including development of a MOOC [massively open online course] called 'Identifying the Dead', which we already have 15,000 signed up for. All of the development for that MOOC took place through Box," Saunders says, before describing how an incremental rollout is gaining traction across campus.
"We wanted to start lightly to make sure we knew what we were doing and could control it. Now, we're looking at how we can use it for most of our senior team meetings, which are recorded through Box," he explained.
Saunders told Computing how one of the biggest benefits of Box is how the interface is very simple to use, something he likened to having the intuitiveness of an iPhone.
"For being able to share internally and externally, we've found that Box has been very easy to use," he said, adding "It says ‘welcome' when you first turn it on and you go from there; it's as easy as that."
However, despite the positive response to Box, Saunders stressed that the cloud collaboration tool isn't necessarily the best tool to use for storing everything.
We told people that Box isn't for everything. We have core corporate solutions, finance, HR and things like that and that people should be keeping information in those systems," he said.