The Bakersfield College Information Services Department is currently working on a Web page that could potentially save students money, allow students to get more sleep, conserve energy and help the environment.
Many students at BC have had the experience of driving for miles across town or from another town to the main campus only to find a note on the classroom door stating that class has been canceled. First-year BC student Megan Heiss, 18, a psychology major, resides near Liberty High School and drives to and from BC three days a week.
Recently, she arrived on campus at the designated time only to find a note on the door saying class was canceled.
“This was a waste of more than two hours of my time,” said Heiss, who has a busy schedule. When asked if she would use a Web page that allowed her to check for class cancellations, she said, “Absolutely.”
“Why should I have to drive all the way if the instructor doesn’t have to?” she added.
Not only is time management an issue related to the lack of a system of this kind, there also are environmental and economic concerns.
Gloria Vasquez, 18, a journalism major, lives in Delano. She has to drive from Delano to the main BC campus two days a week for a single class, and she recently had to leave from Visalia, where she was attending to some personal business. She drove to the main campus in time for her history class, but when she arrived at the classroom, she found a cancellation notice on the door.
Vasquez, who drives a Mustang, doesn’t get the best gas mileage and, with gas prices at nearly $3 per gallon, she said she can’t afford to make unnecessary trips.
“It was frustrating to drive all that way and find the class canceled,” she said.
David Barnett, BC’s Internet services administrator, is working on implementing a system that would allow students to check for class cancellations. Barnett wants to add a page to the college’s existing Web site that students can check before they leave home.
“We have the ability to do this, but it also presents some potential problems,” Barnett said.
In an interview with Barnett and Information Services Director Jim McGee, the two bounced ideas off each other about how to best build such a Web page and what some of the potential problems might be.
Some of the problems they noted are ensuring proper use; keeping students from accessing the system and canceling classes; determining who is responsible for entering class cancellation information; making students and faculty aware that the page exists; and deciding who will hold faculty members accountable for posting cancellations.
McGee noted that the most persuasive and potentially effective group for driving the consistent use of the system could be the students. When asked if he thought the implementation of this notification process should be driven from the top down, that is, from the administration to the faculty, he said, “Sometimes it is more difficult to get things done from the top down. But if students let their instructors know that they are checking the site and the instructor isn’t posting cancellations, they will probably get better results.”
Barnett said he believes the potential problems can be worked out. He and McGee are planning on presenting the Web page idea and its initial design at the next meeting of the Information Services and Instructional Technology committee, a committee made up of students, faculty, administration and staff that acts in an advisory capacity. Barnett ventured a guess at the time frame for the completion of the new page, saying that most of it should be in place by the first part of November.
The current system of informing students of a cancelled class is straight forward, but doesn’t notify students before class starts. An instructors who will miss a class will notify their department secretaries, who then prepare letters informing students of the cancellation that are placed on classroom doors.
Although receptive to the idea of an automated system, Angela Thompson, a secretary for the English Department, stressed the importance of efficiency.
“At times we get so busy that we may forget to generate a notice until the last minute,” she said.
Dean of Students Don Turney was enthusiastic about the idea.
“This would be one more thing we can use to help students out, especially with gas at $3 per gallon,” he said. “It is an opportunity for the college to show they care for the needs of their students.”
Ash West, president of BC’s Student Government Association, also was very receptive to the idea. West said that he would bring the issue before the Academic Senate and use whatever promotional resources they had available to them to help get the word out. West also said that he would have Erica Grall, BC’s student representative to the Kern Community College District Board of Trustees, introduce the idea at the next board meeting.