China Youth University for Political Sciences, the only general institution of higher learning for the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, needed to revamp its weak IT infrastructure to establish itself as a modern, training ground for future leaders. By deploying Microsoft Office 2010 and Windows 7, the university radically improved productivity with a solution that is user-friendly and rich in functionality.
Situation
China Youth University for Political Sciences is a continuing education institution catered to undergraduates, graduate students, international students, and students from the Communist Youth League cadres. The school has maintained strong relationships with universities throughout the world in, especially in the areas of undergraduate education, research partnerships, and academic exchanges.
In a contemporary context, improving and optimizing IT environments is critical to helping employees work efficiently to save time and money.
 |
The mail merging function in Word 2010 allows you to compile the names of recipients into a list…This is extremely convenient for people like me who send out dozens of emails every day. |
 |
|
Wang
Office of the Registrar,
China Youth University for Political Sciences |
|
|
As a liberal arts university, the IT infrastructure at China Youth University for Political Sciences was fairly weak. IT asset management was not very stringent, and instructors were not well-versed in technology systems. School officials and the IT team were concerned about effective IT planning, IT management, information security, increasing the familiarity instructors have with office software, teaching instructors to better handle files and produce courseware, and developing the school’s IT environment.
Solution
China Youth University was so impressed with its Windows 7 deployment, which resulted in enormous gains in productivity for instructors due to its simple functionality and user-friendly configuration, that it showed interest in other Microsoft products. This was how Microsoft Gold Partner Beijing Huanyu Tongda Technology Co., Ltd. came to deploy a test environment of Office 2010 for the college. In addition to deployment, the partner also offered technical training and product testing for a group of instructors at the school.
During the beta, users became quickly familiarized with the new functions in Office 2010, and experienced, first-hand, the benefits of the new productivity software in preparing courseware, enhancing teaching materials, and increasing productivity.
The Office Professional Plus 2010 deployment throughout the entire school was fast and secure, and its convenient installation, activation services and support reduced the IT department’s workload.
Benefits
Compatibility
Prior to upgrading to Office 2010, most instructors at the school used Office 97-2003, and few ran Office 2007. The majority were unfamiliar with IT, and worried about compatibility problems between Office 2010 and previous versions. The concerns included the ability to open files, change content, and send files to colleagues with older versions who would be unable to read or use the files. However, the demonstrations and instructions provided by the partner assured instructors that with Office 2010, files could be stored to the oldest version without any compatibility issues.
Secure, Optimized IT Management
The IT department suffered from a lack of unified management and control. Instructors were using different Office versions that they had installed and activated individually, and leaks of Office keys were a liability. Confidential information leaks became a greater liability, posing a threat to the overall information security of the school.
Office 2010’s new activation process called Key Management Service (KMS) greatly reduced the IT department’s workload, and made overall management of office software easy while preventing IT asset losses and
ensuring the security of the school’s information.
Technicians at Microsoft assisted the instructors in the school’s IT department with the setup of a KMS activation server so that only one computer on campus needed to be configured as the KMS host. The KMS host and the Microsoft-hosted server were put through a one-time linkup and activation process so that other machines could be activated by simply using the KMS host.
New Functionality, Better Performance
Instructors want to use the Internet to access more educational resources while enriching class style and content to teach more effectively. With Office 2010, just a few simple mouse clicks help instructors become more effective teachers.
PowerPoint
Instructors are pleased with PowerPoint 2010’s new features. Teachers often use courseware to demonstrate teaching points to students. They hope that with PowerPoint presentations, they can spend less time and use simple functions to produce more effective course materials that are interesting to students. The large number of preloaded templates provides more choices, and the lively options for images and effects when switching between slides allows for smoother presentations. Professional drawings are no longer needed for backgrounds. In addition, the “delete background” function offers a quick and simple way of deleting image backgrounds by dragging them with the mouse, an operation that can be completed in less than a minute.
Word
Projects and essays by students often involve multiple iterations. In previous versions of Word, productivity was greatly reduced due to the fact that instructors needed to compare documents multiple times if there were multiple edits by students and changes by teachers. With the reviewing and merging functions in Word 2010, the screen is automatically divided in two; the left half shows the edits that have been made, while the right half is further divided into upper and lower screens showing the contents of the two different documents. This allows teachers to see changes made by students and to use the merge function to incorporate revisions made by multiple writers into one document, quickly and easily.
OneNote, Excel
Instructors often participate in school events, meetings, and academic exchanges. With OneNote 2010, teachers can make notes in various categories and gather information, resources and audio recordings more easily. At the same time, the translation tool in Word 2010 is handy for translating documents without the need to install extra translation software. The visualization tool in Excel 2010 helps make sense of complex data, while the “mini-map” and “slicer” functions simplify complex data and makes it come alive.
Microsoft Partner Support and Service
Thanks to Microsoft Gold Partner Beijing Huanyu Tongda Technology Co., Ltd., the deployment of Office 2010 was seamless.
The partner not only recommended and demonstrated Office 2010, but also trained many of the teachers. Instructors learned about the new functions in Office 2010 and became very interested in using the program. There was little resistance to the Office 2010 adoption as the teachers were convinced of its easy-to-use and new functionalities.
Technicians from Beijing Huanyu Tongda Technology also ran tests on the deployment environment prior to setting up the software in order to ensure that it was right for the school. Since the school’s IT department was not familiar with the Key Management Service (KMS), the partner helped set up the activation server and trained the employees to manage the system. After the Office 2010 deployment, the partner remained in frequent contact with technical staff at the school to help complete the fast and easy transition to the Office 2010.
Microsoft Office 2010
Microsoft Office 2010 gives your people powerful, timesaving tools to do their best work from more places. With new capabilities and insightful updates to Excel, PowerPoint, Word and Outlook, Office 2010 offers the complete package— with familiar, intuitive tools. Now you can express ideas, solve problems, connect with people, and create amazing results—in the office, at home, or on the go. For more information about Microsoft Office, go to: www.office.com
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400
. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about China Youth University for Political Sciences, visit the Website at:
www.cyu.edu.cn
