7 Ed Tech Projects at Virginia Western Community College

From lecture capture to automated lockdown systems, Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke, Va., has made a number of improvements to help students learn and keep them safe.

For its efforts, the college earned first place in the mid-sized college category of the Digital Community Colleges Survey, conducted by the Center for Digital Education.

Keep reading to find out about the seven education technology initiatives that the college has been working on.

1. Lecture capture

For two semesters, 25 instructors have piloted lecture capture technology. And in the fall, the initiative moved out of the pilot phase. 

All 80 classrooms have the technology to record lectures. Since August, 84 instructors have created 442 sessions. The college has 85 teaching faculty and 453 adjuncts.

And students have viewed about 580 hours of recorded lectures, said David Harrison, director of Information and Educational Technologies.

From a teaching standpoint, the college initially was concerned that students wouldn't come to class as much because of the recorded lectures. But that's not the case, according to student surveys during the pilot phase. Most of them use the lectures to supplement, not replace class time.

"This is the first time where I've ever seen that we really came close to knocking it out of the park," Harrison said. "I've never seen the faculty so excited about it, but more importantly, I've never seen students so excited about it."

2. Virtual infrastructure

Since 2006, Virginia Western Community College has virtualized over 95 percent of its servers. About 100 to 120 servers are virtualized.

In 2008, the IT team started switching to virtual desktops.  Now the college can host about 400 sessions on thin clients. And by the spring semester, students will have three labs filled with nearly 80 devices.
 

3. Cloud printing

This fall, the college started outsourcing academic printing to a cloud company. The company brings printing kiosks to campus, pays the college to keep them there and hires students to maintain them.

And now students can print in color if they want to, which they haven't been able to do before. Virginia Western Community College hopes this will reduce print costs and paper consumption.
 

4. Collaboration stations

In the Learning Commons, the IT team started installing collaboration work stations. In these stations, multiple people can hook up their laptops and devices to work on projects.
 

5. Wireless network

This semester, the college is finishing up a migration to a new wireless provider that has enhanced outdoor capabilities. Because of this project, the IT team will provide outdoor reception so students and staff can access wireless from parking lots and other campus locations.
 

6. Enterprise active directory

Virginia Western is the first community college in Virginia to implement an enterprise active directory. Previously, students authenticated to a systems office in Richmond. But the college wanted them to authenticate locally.

After integrating a system on campus, the IT staff have access to an active directory for about 2.5 million students. Instead of having another name and password to remember, students can authenticate using their student account.
 

7. Automated lockdown system

Less than a year ago, the college installed a system that automates its lockdown procedure. Throughout campus buildings, students and staff see blue pull stations similar to the red fire alarm pull stations.

If someone sees something suspicious, he can pull down the lever. It automatically sets off the siren system, sends text alert messages to all students and broadcasts verbal lockdown messages to the VoIP phones in every office and class.

"It's certainly not one of the bigger things that we're doing, but it is certainly a unique type of implementation," Harrison said.

Administration, IT support makes these projects possible

Harrison stressed that the college administration has supported IT efforts. And that's been essential for implementing lecture capture, virtualization and outsourced printing.

Along with administration support, the IT staff have done a great job with all these projects.

"You can't pull off things like this without a great team of all stars, and I think we're really blessed to have a good staff of people who really do care."