[OPEN] Students and Education Users - How Can We Help?

[amanda.k]

Hi Community!

I’m interested to hear any ideas you have in how we can support students and educators. You don’t have to be a an education user yourself to contribute – if you’ve spent time around the forums and seen threads from students, have children or friends that are university aged – you still have feedback and opinions I am interested in!

We are trying to increase education participation on the forums, including but not limited to the Student Group Hub and Installation & Licensing Boards. Feedback could include:

1. Events, communications, or other types of communication themes and topics
2. Support related suggestions
3. Content related suggestions
4. Any other observations that you have

Thank you so much for your time / thoughts - I look forward to connecting with you!

[RDAOU]

Hi Amanda,

I currently managing 2 projects in Germany and occasional engaged as a guest speaker at a local university on BIM and Project Management and I can tell you a couple of things about students I've met here...

• The majority of those I met have no idea of Autodesk's Education Community
• None were aware of this forum although some did use Revit or Autocad at more than one occasion
• The general idea the students I met have about some of Autodesk's KEY software is that which they got from their educators (who usually seem to favor the conventional applications used and have been popular here during the past couple of decades)

Suggestions:

1. Give them more intensives which would stir their curiosity 
2. Your local teams should work more closely with universities and maybe sponsor certain programs or competitions  
3. Reach out for the smaller universities too
4. Give students and educators free access to Events such as Autodesk University (the last time it was held in Darmstadt I do not recall noticing students around...I do remember bumping into several Autodesk classified Educators but none who were actual Educators at university)

Oh! And consider reinstating the 3 years Educational license and include Cloud access in it 🙂 

[leowarren34]

@RDAOU I think the main issue right now is the verification and that it can be inconsistent from the forum replies I've seen. 1 Year renewable licenses I don't think are that much of an issue themselves as it's tied to your educational access which unfortunately does mean going through verification annually but that's the main gripe.

I know Autodesk does work with some universities, The University of Warwick, where I am now is one of them as our Engineering Build Space is 'Powered by Autodesk'.

However I do agree with your point with AU, and whilst free is unlikely, heavily discounted would be great, especially as I've seen so many students engage with AU classes last year and there's substantial interest in the Student Group Hub (Autodesk's Student Forum Group).

One suggestion I'd like to throw into the ring is a way for those involved heavily in the forums to get involved more with the educational licensing, especially network licenses are given they are being phased out for most of the part, except for education. So these institutions who use network licenses will have a harder time getting started as the rest of the community has moved on.

[YamaichiA]

Hello every one

[amanda.k]

Hey there @YamaichiA! Welcome to the Feedback Hub  - let me know if you have any ideas for getting our Students and Educators more involved and active in the Community!

[YamaichiA]

Thansk, my dear @amanda.k  I am gonna my ideas, and suggestions. For the community. 

[amanda.k]

Hi @RDAOU!  You have some great points that I am looking forward to implementing. I agree - most students do not know that we have a Student Group Hub, or even Forums for that matter. Your experience in speaking at universities is very valuable to me - and I hope you don't mind if I reach out to you in the future to expand a little more about that.

Our goal for the next quarter is to get the word out that the Student Group Hub is a great place to be, while bringing onboard more interactive features to make sure the students stay interested and rewarded. As they're released I'll tag you here so you can see that we are looking to implement several of the suggestions you had.

And of course, as we go forward with these - let me know if you have any other ideas! ALWAYS very interested and appreciate you taking the time. 

[kevinchapmanTDSB]

I'm looking for the best way to provide Education licensing for a large school board (K-12) with multiple schools running AutoCAD LT and AutoCAD using the single workstation license model that expires after 1 year.  Is there any current documentation for implementing a network license server to centralize licensing?   This link is no longer working

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/search-result/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-manage-Education-...

Is named user licensing, federated from Azure AD possible for education licensing? 

[RDAOU]

@leowarren34 when I read your reply I was going to reply till I got to your signature...that's when I figured there is no point 

Why now...it is because it is called a feedback hub and funnily enough on Friday I was contacted by the same student group from last year. Back in March 2021 the only way to get them back on track was to let their accounts expire and create new Edu accounts with their university IDs. One year passed all 4 of them got notified that their access will expire in 30 days and guess what happens when they try to renew...the same exact issue they had last year and the same notification for 3 weeks of the 30 days notice (see forwarded image below). They did contact Edu Community support and opened a ticket and posted on the forum to no avail...oh and yeah they are not in a 3rd world red zone country, they are studying at one of the most renowned universities in Germany.

This year my advice was slightly different than last year.

1. Either wait for it to expire and create a new account like last year
2. or finish up the project either in Rhino, Archicad, Digital Projects or Bentley Building Design ... 4 other BIM authoring applications they have educational access to and never have been giving their fellow classmates the same problem at least not with license renewal.

I will let you guess what they chose...

@amanda.k How can you help. Forget about the previous suggestions I made and simply fix the licensing system 🙂 the less the frustration, the more the interest. A strategy more profitable for Autodesk than appointing Expert Elites and Student Ambassadors