Houston CC Puts Web Database Development into Hands of Non-IT Staff

Houston Community College has purchased an enterprise license for an application that allows college staff to create Web-based interactive content without knowing how to program. The college's print and e-media department began using Caspio to publish class schedules for its six campuses in Texas. Previously, the schedules were made available in PDF format. Since that initial use, which took place in summer 2009, the college has rolled out additional online database applications, including course registration, meeting requests, and mobile student directories.

Caspio uses wizards to guide a user through the process of creating searchable databases and setting up an application that can be deployed to a Web site.

For the course schedule project, the Houston college imported 15,000 records pertaining to existing class schedule content into the Caspio database. The new version of the schedule allows students to find, compare, and register for classes through the Web site. A side benefit of the conversion has helped to optimize the site and make it more searchable. Joe Conway, director of print and e-media at the college, estimated that the new application receives 1 million to 2 million page views a month during peak registration periods. "The PDFs didn't get a tenth of the traffic that our online database now gets," he said.

"With Caspio, we can publish information online in a way that makes it easy for both students and faculty to use," Conway added. "As a public college, we have a lot of responsibility on a tight budget, and Caspio simply helps us do more for less."

The Web-based service has also been used by Purdue University, Stanford, and Yale, among other institutions.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • AI robot with cybersecurity symbol on its chest

    Microsoft Adds New Agentic AI Tools to Security Copilot

    Microsoft has announced a major expansion of its AI-powered cybersecurity platform, introducing a suite of autonomous agents to help organizations counter rising threats and manage the growing complexity of cloud and AI security.

  •  laptop on a clean desk with digital padlock icon on the screen

    Study: Data Privacy a Top Concern as Orgs Scale Up AI Agents

    As organizations race to integrate AI agents into their cloud operations and business workflows, they face a crucial reality: while enthusiasm is high, major adoption barriers remain, according to a new Cloudera report. Chief among them is the challenge of safeguarding sensitive data.

  • stacks of glowing digital documents with circuit patterns and data streams

    Mistral AI Introduces AI-Powered OCR

    French AI startup Mistral AI has launched Mistral OCR, an advanced optical character recognition (OCR) API designed to convert printed and scanned documents into digital files with "unprecedented accuracy."

  • open laptop in a college classroom with holographic AI icons like a brain and data charts rising from the screen

    4 Ways Universities Are Using Google AI Tools for Learning and Administration

    In a recent blog post, Google shared an array of education customer stories, showcasing ways institutions are using AI tools like Gemini and NotebookLM to transform both learning and administrative tasks.