The Business Information Technology department at Highline Community College, in Washington State, teaches technology classes from Windows through Web design. We average 30 students per class with 400+ department head count per quarter in all courses.

We chose to work with Course Technology because of the dedication and responsiveness of our sales representative. When working with technology, there is almost a guarantee that there will be some sort of technical issue at one time or another. Course Technology reps are dedicated to assisting when there is an issue! They are responsive and attentive at all times – I cannot say the same for any other publishing company. Our particular rep is the best of all the other book reps and I know I can rely on her to be there when I need her for technology issues or just a standard text book order.

Our college serves a very diverse population. We struggle to serve those who are immigrants and non-native speakers as well as those native students who have varying backgrounds with technology. We struggled with reading levels in text books as well as assessment strategies that worked. Our sales rep worked with us to find text books that met the needs of our students class by class to ensure that the reading level was appropriate to the material. Then, we have used SAM software to assist with our assessment and training issues. The ability to allow students to walk through a task over and over on SAM is invaluable. The assessment flexibility that it gives puts students in the diver’s seat of their learning and eases the grading burden on the instructor so we can concentrate on teaching! Finally – in some of our more advanced courses where production projects were desired, we implemented CaseGrader! This software is wonderful! Students and faculty BOTH love it and continue to find it a very reliable and easy to work with product.

As a result of our work with Course Technology, our department has seen an increase in our outcomes being met! We are better able to assess student knowledge with multiple assessment strategies. Students find that working in our department takes a bit of time to set up all the software’s and accounts, but once they got every piece of technology working, they liked it. Students tell us that technology glitches are the biggest frustration, but though our work with our Course Technology rep, we manage to keep these to a minimum. Students also tell us they LOVE the ability to have multiple attempts at questions in SAM or uploads of CaseGrader assignments.

Over the years of working with Course Technology, we have found that the most useful thing for students when working with a new piece of technology is to write our CLEAR instructions. The use of visuals to explain as much as possible is even more helpful. Our department uses Camtasia to create mini movies for students in our modular and online classes. This way it is like getting the instructor in the classroom in front of them any time they want.

Jessica Gilmore
Coordinator of BTECH Department
Highline Community College
Des Moines, WA