Monterey Peninsula College Case Study

MPC Enriches Students’ Experience with an Innovative Web Platform

URL: http://www.mpc.edu | Download this Case Study as an Adobe PDF file (247 KB)

Monterey Peninsula College (MPC) has been our client since 1999 when School Web Services (SWS) was hired to build a high-impact Web presence and transfer the college’s Web environment from a Linux platform to a Microsoft platform. SWS also provided the pre-built modules that automated a number of continuously-changing areas of MPC’s site, such as job postings, news releases, and calendars.

SWS worked with the college’s Web committee and graphic artist to implement a design that the college felt represented their famous coastal location and their dynamic community.We also created a Web presence a step ahead of other college sites in organization and usability:

“School Web Services has provided Monterey Peninsula College with outstanding Web site support since the College’s staff and faculty began working with them in 1999. SWS has consistently made customer service and support their top priority, which has made our Web-related initiatives immediately productive – and successful. SWS has offered innovative solutions to everyWeb site development related issue we’ve needed to address. I wholeheartedly recommended School Web Services to anyone needing to move their Web site’s functionality to the next level.” (Paul Emenhiser, Director of Information Systems)

Once developed and implemented, this initial site served the college, its students, and its community for over three years, with ongoing technical support from SWS.The next goal of the Web site committee was to provide something new – and completely dynamic. The college wanted to distribute the Web site’s maintenance throughout the campus, plus provide the tools to help all faculty members supplement their raditional courses with online information; however, the Microsoft FrontPage solution then in use was not adequately managing the site’s content from a user’s perspective.The college required something simpler.To accommodate its Web site’s increasing role in informing and connecting the MPC community, the college implemented the SWS Campus Platform.

MPC purchased a license to the Campus Platform package in 2002, and by the end of the year, it was fully deployed and the site converted.With this site, SWS initiated a new, user-friendly solution to creating, posting and modifying pages, which accommodated the broader participation of administration and instruction:

“The enhanced content management features of the SWS Campus Platform allow MPC to distribute the maintenance for the college’s intranet and Web site throughout the organization. Now that we’ve implemented the SWS Campus Platform,MPC’s departments have the ability to update their home pages’ contents from within their browsers. All areas of our intranet now have the capability of being maintained by the individual information owners, and this feature, combined with the Platforms’s powerful database publishing, makes it a valuable tool for this community college campus.” (Paul Emenhiser)

Faculty members were also pleased. Additional features substantially enriched MPC’s online capacity, including learning communities with discussion boards that aid in the communication of ideas. Microsoft Office documents and PDF files can be easily uploaded and managed, providing students with syllabi, assignments, study guides and links to further resources.MPC’s instructors now have the ability to integrate course objectives and classroom instruction with a responsive, useable Web presence:

“The SWS Campus Platform is an outstanding addition to our college’s communication system. It provides a place for instructors teaching traditional courses to include online elements, such as electronic publications and discussion forums, in their curriculum.The faculty home pages are simple to set up and maintain. They free instructors from the burden of having to create attractive, usable home pages from scratch, yet they allow a great deal of flexibility, as well as the inclusion of many different types of information in a relatively simple template.” (Beth Penney, English Faculty, Monterey Peninsula College)

Through two dynamic phases of development, SWS has served MPC with foresight, flexibility and dedication.The SWS Campus Platform has been specifically designed for educational Web site needs, and none are better at providing the up-to-date content and fresh design so important to MPC’s online presence. SWS has created a user-friendly environment, styled to MPC’s academic community and supported by committed, skilled SWS technical staff. As MPC reaches out to the community, SWS will continue to evolve, providing the vision and technology to meet Monterey’s online needs.