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Collin County Community College District: Online Class Schedule Proves Successful
4/29/2003
Collin County Community College District (CCCCD) has six locations and more than 37,000 students registered in credit programs or in continuing education. Three times a year CCCCD prints and distributes class schedules for the credit courses. To attract and retain the 16,000 students registered in credit programs the college prints over 200,000 copies for each print run—a minimum of eight copies for each student.
The large numbers of class schedules are printed for mailing to virtually all households in the college region. However, there was concern over the effectiveness of the mail promotion—whether it was the best way to communicate course opportunities to the community.
The Web and its Drawbacks
Wanting to find new ways to distribute class schedules and to market the college,
CCCCD turned to the Internet, placing downloadable PDFs on its Web site and
creating an online version of class schedule information. Unfortunately, the
PDF version didn't improve how students and potential students could use the
class schedule information. The PDF made the information widely available, but
these documents were static when viewed on screen or printed, and were not usable
in ways that added value for the students.
The college had a similar experience with the online version of the class schedule and calendar. Course descriptions could not be easily found and it failed to provide the information in an easily accessible format. The college was also concerned with bandwidth constraints. The 37,000 plus students trying to access the college Internet site could place strain on the host computer system, and might not allow all students to access the information needed. The college also recognized that the majority of students use dial-up Internet connections that would make the problem worse by causing online bottlenecks. CCCCD administrators felt there must be a more effective way to use the Internet to offer class information
Finding the Right Technology
The college identified a new option for publishing the college catalog and class
schedule in an electronic format when it began working with MultiView Inc. in
early 2002. Documents published using the Web-synchronized MultiView format
are installed onto the students' and prospective students' desktop or laptop
computers. The MultiView class schedule is used offline by each student, but
the information in the application is Web synchronized. The student installs
the software application once, and by clicking the update button, it connects
over the Internet to a Web site to download a file containing any changes. The
application retrieves the updates, seamlessly inserts them into the document
at the correct location, and deletes outdated entries. Students can always have
the most recent college information on their local computer.
MultiView designed the software for publishing any type of document with dynamic content that is difficult to keep up-to-date, such as membership directories, catalogs, or buyers' guides. The features of the software made it well-suited to the needs of the college, but MultiView still made a few changes to the application. The one feature created specifically for the Collin County Community College District application was "My Schedule," which allows students to build their course schedules right in the application where they can be viewed, changed, and printed.
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