Case Studies
Bunker Hill Community College
Bunker Hill Community College is one of the largest state colleges in Massachusetts. Being a leader in workforce education and having the majority of students working while taking classes, their website has to address student needs at a variety of levels and provide a sizable quantity of information. The site also needs to help the staff manage the college's large (8,209 day, evening, weekend, web and distance students) and diverse population.
To meet the many goals of the college, we proposed a highly dynamic site designed so that updates could be handled by the college staff. Here is a list of innovations that were developed to bring Bunker Hill Community College up-to-date, be more productive, and address student needs:
- The website is database driven, which allows for quick changes to content in multiple areas. For example — the name of a professor is changed once in the database. Then presto — everywhere the old name was, the new name has taken its place.
- We created a client editable website and provided BHCC with the management tools necessary so staff, without comprehensive knowledge of web programming, can edit the site themselves. They can make instant changes to their site without us. This saves time and money — something every client is interested in.
- Home page color scheme and appearance changes on reload. By making the home page appearance vary randomly between 5 different looks, the site stays "fresh" and new. Each version highlights a different aspect of the college that the administration wants to promote or direct students toward. Try refreshing the page, it's pretty fun.
Home page reloads with new image and colors course form
- An online course guide allows students to search for courses by name or by course of study (degree). The online companion was a clear enhancement to the printed version which runs several hundred pages and is difficult to update and distribute. The online version is up-to-date and doesn't incur a printer's fee.
Multiple search features in the online course form
- Having a website that is accessible to the visually impaired ties in to the larger belief of accessibility and diversity for community colleges. The college also needs to be in compliance with state and federal requirements, so there are special features like being able to "zoom in" to make the page larger and easier to read.
- Multi-lingual web pages are a crucial educational link to a diverse, urban population. Over 90 countries are represented in the student body at BHCC. The multi-lingual aspect was built to facilitate the needs of students who may not speak English as a first language.
View the page in 5 different languages
- Keeping track of everyone who works in a large multi-campus school like BHCC is not easy. Our searchable employee directory allows anyone to search by first or last name. When the search results are displayed, where the person works is included. This way you can verify that you have found the right person, since "Joachim Smith, English Department" may not be the same as "Joachim Smith, Basketball Coach".