Inside BC is an online portal designed by the Informational Services Department at Bakersfield College to allow students an easier way to access personal accounts such as Banweb, Moodle and college e-mail.
“The portal somewhat works like a Super Wal-Mart in the sense that it offers students these technological resources in one place with one login,” explained Todd Coston, interim director of Information Services.
Coston’s colleague, David R. Barnett, Internet Services administrator, said,“When the students sign in, it has that ‘my courses’ tab that lists all the courses you’re taking.
“We automatically create this site for each course registration number an instructor teaches and so if a faculty adopts this, students will be able to navigate more than one instructor’s pages as well.”
Both Coston and Barnett agreed that the biggest negative would only be the change. Students who have been around longer would have to adapt to the new way of logging in, but that’s really the only drawback in their opinion.
This has been in the making for three or four years, and testing officially began during 2011 summer classes.
Now the portal is just working out any bugs that may be remaining. Students also have the ability to help administration with these bugs.
Students are able to give feedback on how the portal is working for them, which has been and will continue to enable all involved parties to improve on it.
Sandra Serrano, Chancellor of Kern Community College District, had expressed her vision among presidents and managers of each campus, which then led to them contacting Information Technology and wanting ideas and products supplied that would enable her vision to manifest.
“All services and hardware are based from the District Offices, who hosts all our sites,” Coston stated.
“The portal is not just limited to the Bakersfield Campus. Cerro Coso and Delano campuses have access as well.”
Barnett and Coston hope the new system will have a snowball effect to where students will gradually become used to the new login.
IT believes that this is the new wave of registration among community colleges and universities in the area, with BC being somewhere in the middle among advancement of technology in this area.
Eventually, this type of login will be how colleges and universities will interact with their students.