NTUST has a new experimental digital teaching plan, and an ASUSTOR NAS is at the center of digital learning.

"The AS6102T allows us to store research data and related literature in a central location over time. All students can share resources. Each graduate student who participates in video lectures can directly upload content via the Internet, shortening team discussions and more effectively completing research. What's even better is that the Searchlight feature helps us quickly find the information we need in a large database. NAS has become an indispensable part of our digital life.” - Cathy Weng, Graduate Chair / Ph.D. Associate Professor

The Challenge

NTUST has always focused on excellence, scientific integration, innovation and holistic education as well as being among the world’s top 100 in the academic field of design and education. NTUST has not only cultivated many excellent digital professionals, but also created several types of digital content such as Digital Scholarship and Intercultural Communication for the Department of Education. In order to help students in their hometown take supplementary classes and help their schooling progress, the Cultural Exchange Program is for foreign graduate students to conduct visual communication and cultural exchanges with local students. Each student’s learning materials are for semester assignments, but fragmented e-mail submissions are not efficient. The Digital TV program uses third-party video software to record the teaching process and all dialogue contents. The recorded video is first archived in a third-party server. Due to limited storage space, the director of the digital office must periodically publish the video on a regular basis while deleting local copies to release enough space to add new files. Since implementing this teaching plan, the results have been significant. As a result, the number of video files generated has increased day by day. Dr Weng is facing challenges such as insufficient local storage space and fragmented data access, and seeks an ASUSTOR NAS to help store data in a central location.

The Solution

After carefully evaluating different types of NAS using the Internet, Dr Weng selected the ASUSTOR AS6102T and now uses it as a digital data center. ADM OS, which is preinstalled on the AS6102T helps guide users to better understand how to use their NAS. This is different from Dr Weng’s previous experiences in storage. An ASUSTOR NAS is simpler and therefore takes less time to explore and learn. In Access Control, Dr Weng imported the user list created in advance using the excel form. After importing, all graduate students now have user accounts and passwords and now have access to a shared folder accessible by the group. Also, graduate students have individual access rights which not only retain data privacy, but also do not interfere with simultaneous access by other students.

According to Dr Weng, the curriculum and teaching materials prepared by the graduate students for implementation of the Digital Scholarship and Intercultural Communication video lectures were all stored using external hard disks or Dropbox and then submitted separately. It was found to be inefficient and submissions were easily lost. Now students directly upload reports and assignments to the AS6102T. Students do not need to send files by email. They only need to inform the professor where they put their files. This will eliminate the problem of fragmented submissions and speed up communication between teachers and students.

The AS6102T also has the Searchlight search feature. Searchlight is capable of performing fuzzy searches by entering keywords to bring up a list of related files and folders. Upon using Searchlight for the first time, Dr Weng said "I was worried that if my graduate students stored a large amount of files on the NAS, it would take a long time to find the right files. Turns out that finding what I need is really easy." In addition, Dr Weng also found that using ADM is not too different from using a PC. For example, Dr Weng uses drag and drop frequently to move around files, folders and research reports to the desktop as well as creating shortcuts to efficiently get things done. Flexible and personalized settings allow each user to change the system language independently so that foreign graduate students can easily use the NAS.

The AS6102T is stable, easy to learn and fully featured. It’s also easy to set up and use. Features can be customized by downloading apps that fit the needs of today’s mobile users such as AiMaster and AiData. These mobile apps can can remotely access the NAS to view the system or access data. Dr Weng also stated: “The AS6102T allows us to store research data and related literature in a central location over the course of a school year. All graduate students can share resources. Each graduate student who participates in a video lecture can directly upload the prepared course and content via the internet and shorten any time wasted. At the conclusion of our studies, we have found that the AS6102T has become an indispensable part of our digital life."

ASUSTOR NAS Advantages

• Smooth experience and UI
• ADM’s UI is Easy to learn
• Flexible personalization settings
• ASUSTOR Searchlight
• Centralized and fully featured backup tools
• Conveniently access remotely using mobile apps