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Bay receives Digital Colleges Survey Award

ESCANABA — The Center for Digital Education’s (CDE) Digital Community Colleges Survey Awards honor community colleges utilizing technology to engage students, collaborate with K-12 and other educational institutions, and improve learning. The CDE announced the winners of its 2017-18 Digital Community Colleges Survey and Bay College has been awarded fifth place in the nation. The survey analyzes how community colleges use a range of technologies to improve services to students, faculty, and the community at large. All accredited U.S. community colleges can participate within three classifications based on enrollment size. Bay College falls into the small college’s category with less than 5,000 students.

“Achieving another top 10 award this year demonstrates [Bay’s] continued commitment to leverage technology to improve the experience for our students and employees. Projects such as academic planning, website redesign, video conference expansions, and the addition of a virtual anatomy table contributed to our selection for this award. This is the fifth straight year being in the top ten, and it wouldn’t have been possible without a culture at the college that is capable of embracing technology. I am happy to be a part of a team that is able to tackle such significant improvements because we’re focused on our mission of student success, community success, and a culture of success,” said Justin Izzard, director of IT at Bay College.

A recent study conducted by Educause in which it collaborated with 183 institutions to collect responses from 71,641 students about their technology experiences. What they found was that 78% of students agree that the use of technology contributes to the successful completion of courses and that 46 percent of students say they get more actively involved in courses that use technology. The extensive study also found that 6 in 10 students want their instructors to use lecture capture, early alert systems, and free web-based supplemental content. Students reported they are always connected and access to robust Wi-Fi while on campus is an important factor in their success.

Employees at Bay College realize the importance of technology in the work they do and believe technology is key to designing student-centered systems whereby they engage students where they are. Employees across the institution use technology in creative and innovative ways, such as hybrid courses, online courses, open educational resources (OER), simulated environments, and so much more!

“Bay College continues to embrace new concepts and implement technologies to enhance both the learning environment as well as its business practices, in fact this way of thinking is embedded in one of our cultural beliefs… I am change,” says Christine Williams, vice president of operations.

Bay College implements technology in its facility operations through smart systems such as lighting that responds to ambient light from exterior windows, automated notification systems, and automated heating and cooling operations based on event scheduling. Technology is also utilized in safety & security through incident reporting, security cameras, emergency notification systems, and smart phone apps.

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