North Shore Community College: Blueprint for Technology Implementation
When North Shore Community College (NSCC), a public college in Massachusetts
with more than 95 degree programs, wanted to integrate its campus business on
the Internet, it decided to use Campus Pipeline Inc.'s Web Platform solution.
In doing so, it envisioned a single sign-on platform to connect its five campus
locations, streamline back-office work, develop a self-service system for student
services, and enhance interaction among campus users.
The building blocks of the integration were the platform and SCT Banner's
online student information system, including Web-for-Student and Web-for-Faculty.
Gary Ham, the college's chief information officer, says, "It was like
discovering gravity. Campus Pipeline provided a single context from which we
could confidently achieve all we had set out to do and more."
NSCC has now been live with Campus Pipeline's platform for one year. Students
have access to online course registration, payment features, transcripts, financial
aid, course schedules, e-mail, calendars, chat and discussion board areas, and
even full-time online tutoring.
Developers said the successful Campus Pipeline platform implementation was
directly related to extensive planning conducted before and during the project.
The NSCC Information Systems group developed specific objectives to ensure campus
teams would be working toward the same goal. Ham demonstrated the features of
the system to campus stakeholders. The decision to move forward was made during
a meeting of faculty and management.
Inviting users to form teams to make functional decisions about portal implementation
was critical for gaining consensus. Three teams were then formed as a means
to split the project into logical segments.
First, an SCT Banner Web Functional Team was charged with configuring SCT's
Web-for-Student and Web-for-Faculty products to reflect the college's actual
practices. Team members represented all of the service areas using the Banner
Student Information System.
Then, a Web Technical Team, which included Information Systems staff, was responsible
for the installation, initial configuration, and maintenance of the SCT Web
products, as well as Campus Pipeline's platform. Finally, a Pipeline Advisory
Team was charged with defining procedures and creating the look of the platform
environment.
During the fall 2000 registration period, NSCC piloted the solution into the
Web-for-Student product. The success of the pilot led to a complete commitment
to the product's use for business process changes. At the same time, there
were a number of issues identified that were challenges to wider use of the
product, including the absence of prerequisite enforcement in the system and
the lack of services for the part-time evening population.
According to Delbert Brown, director of financial aid and a member of the Web
Functional Team, using the Web for registration "required that we re-examine
enrollment procedures. We had to ask, ‘Why are we doing things this way?'
We found that in many cases we were just following procedures because we had
always done them that way. Many of the procedures did not have any service value
whats'ever to the student."
Before moving forward with the implementation, college officials first determined
how they wanted the overall system to function. The team decided that Campus
Pipeline's platform with the Banner Web-for-Student product would be used
initially to provide inquiry access to schedules, transcripts, student billing
status, hold information, and financial aid status.
Officials also decided they would implement the platform initially only for
students taking a credit course, because that student population is more stable.
Non-credit students would be added to the system but only after implementing
the Web payment module.
College administrators had to decide how students would gain access to their
account information, deciding ultimately that they did not want to have to distribute
mailings with user name and password information. The decision was made to build
a front-end account activation form.
To handle account activation errors, administrators knew that they would have
to expand the number of NSCC staff who could assist students with account issues.
To address the problem of providing phone support and to quickly identify any
account problems, a custom Banner form was developed to assist in identifying
students over the phone and to organize information they provided upon activating
their Campus Pipeline account.
The college used Novell Inc.'s GroupWise for e-mail, shared calendars,
shared distribution lists, etc. NSCC decided that the Campus Pipeline e-mail
system would serve as the core e-mail system for its students and adjunct faculty.
Full-time faculty and staff would continue to have GroupWise accounts and have
the option to integrate their GroupWise e-mail into the Campus Pipeline mail
facility through IMAP.
Because students, faculty, and staff needed to have access to services at all
times, NSCC installed a gas-generated uninterruptible power supply system to
provide unlimited power for all systems and communication hardware in the event
of power disruptions. The college also increased help desk hours and launched
a system to remotely monitor all critical systems and services to notify IS
staff via e-mail and wireless phones in the event of a failure.
NSCC officials said they have seen tangible results following the technology
implementation. For instance, before integrating the Web platform, students
could expect to wait in registration lines the length of a football field. Since
the introduction of online registration through the platform, lines have been
virtually eliminated.
To date, more than 8,500 students have activated their Campus Pipeline accounts,
and within 15 months, more than 90 percent of registrations were completed via
the Web. Early registrations for the spring 2002 semester have increased by
29 percent from the previous year and 40 percent overall since the implementation.
The Campus Pipeline Web Platform automatically creates and updates class e-mail
distribution lists for faculty members as students register online, enabling
professors to easily communicate with students. In addition, the Web platform
creates course resource areas for each class so faculty members can provide
class links and make syllabi and class notes available to students before classes
begin.
Another major outcome: "We have seen a spike in the number of faculty
interested in taking advantage of Web-learning tools since the implementation,"
said Phillip Sbaratta, NSCC's assistant dean of academic technology and
distance learning. "Once they become comfortable with the portal and its
functionality, it's a short hop to teaching a Web-assisted or fully online
course. The impact of the portal is greater connection between faculty and students
and a focus on curriculum transformation."
For more information, visit pyramid.nscc.mass.edu.
