The Challenge Ahead
Lewisville Independent School District is built on four cornerstones: Student Learning, Student Experience, Community Engagement and Resource Stewardship. These guiding principles underscore LISD’s commitment to real innovation and limitless opportunities for all of its students.
Lewisville ISD was faced with unimaginable challenges when the pandemic hit. Every aspect of teaching had to be digitally transformed to support remote students’ needs. The district wanted to keep students engaged and connected, but the current solutions faced a tidal wave of IT questions from staff, parents and students.
The lack of any proper program for communication between staff created a significant disconnect because there was no way to handle meetings and create an engaging and connected atmosphere. There is much more to a school than just the 30-minute sessions of lectures and homework. LISD has a strong focus on the community aspects of learning, but was challenged due to the physical disconnect and lack of a proper program.
Like many districts around the country, LISD reviewed, and were leaning toward Zoom to address distance learning. Additionally, LISD was evaluating Office 365 to address instant messaging and internal team meetings. However, they soon found out there was a much better solution thanks to the collaboration experts at Netsync.
Netsync solution covers all the bases, and much more
For over 17 years, Netsync, a Cisco Master Collaboration Partner and two-time SLED Partner of the Year, has successfully deployed an array of solutions, including Cisco Webex, the leading solution for video conferencing, team collaboration, and online collaboration meetings, cloud calling, screen shares and webinars. In fact, Gartner named Cisco Webex the 2019 leader of its highly respected Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions. Based on interviews and consultations with the district’s key stakeholders, including the CTO and Superintendent, Netsync’s Collaboration professionals knew they could design and successfully implement Cisco Webex to exceed the requirements of Lewisville ISD.
Netsync consulted with the CTO and Superintendent to help develop a “Digital Citizenship” agreement for students and parents, which detailed misuse of the new solution. These guidelines had to communicate with the community that this will be a virtual manifestation of traditional education, where both teachers and parents must monitor discipline when necessary.
The Execution
In just 10 days the Netsync Collaboration Team deployed Webex teams for all 53,000 students and 6,500 faculty across 65 schools. To ease and assist faculty, Netsync also created on-premises infrastructure to support WebEx Teams MRA calling. Every campus and staff member had a WebEx Teams space that featured support personnel to monitor problems for rapid response and support.
Netsync set up a large Cisco Contact Center to support calls from administrators, teachers, students and parents. The deployment included extensive training which provided the ability to troubleshoot issues prior to going live. Cisco Contact Center is a cloud-based, cognitive contact center that has intelligence woven throughout every part of both the customer and agent experience. Cisco Contact Center is built around Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and powerful data analytics to transform the entire experience from the inside out. It helps organizations of all sizes unlock higher levels of agility, flexibility, scalability, innovation and customer success.
Netsync guided Lewisville Independent School District through every physical device and software configuration to create a seamless atmosphere for parents, faculty and students. By utilizing Cisco Systems, they created a futureproof online schooling environment that allowed LISD to focus on what really matters, ensuring limitless opportunities for their students.
