Some students district-wide have already made use of their MyVCCCD accounts before it becomes mandatory for all who intend to register for the spring semester.

The web portal was implemented for the purpose of producing a website that could provide accessibility to student services such as Webstar, the Blackboard Learning System, College Library Databases, e-mail, and much more with only a single login.

Dave Fuhrmann, associate vice chancellor of information technology, says that accessibility to student applications was the motivating force for providing the portal.

“The primary driver in the decision was the need to provide more comprehensive online services to our students,” said Fuhrmann. “This is a single site that will provide easier access as well as integrate our existing applications.

Students were granted access to the web portal as early as May and have since been encouraged to create an account before the required date of Dec. 15. Faculty and staff had received MyVCCCD accounts on an earlier date and began utilizing it by the end of the fall 2008 semester.

According to Fuhrmann, employees were given access before students for experimental purposes, as the MyVCCCD project team wanted trials with the portal using a smaller population.

“We felt that we would be more successful starting with a smaller group of people to work out the bugs, and then expanding to larger groups once the system was functioning well,” said Fuhrmann.

The project team designed the portal to be user-friendly by giving early access to members of the student government in order to receive their input. The recommendations the students offered helped to shape the portal’s current profile.

According to Fuhrmann, students can expect more applications to come in the near future. The project team is currently in the process of designing easy access to services such as the math center, career center, Turnitin.com, the Student Voice, financial aid, and featured items with a rotating slideshow of pictures and graphics. The team is also working on setting up personal alerts that will post when events take place and give probation warnings, drop for non-payment alerts, etc.

Despite efforts to create a user-friendly site, some students believe the portal is difficult to learn and would rather maintain the old system of logging on directly to Webstar during the registration process.

Jonathon Rose, a 21-year-old philosophy major at Oxnard College, had only words of criticism towards the portal’s functionality.

“It’s annoying,” said Rose. “There is just too many things going on at once, which makes it difficult for people like me who aren’t technologically savvy.”

Others approve of the portal for integrating student applications and find it to be an innovative resource.

Azm Naseem, an 18-year-old biophysics major at Moorpark College, praised the portal for posting live updates on the recent Guiberson Fire.

“I thought [the portal] was really intuitive and resourceful,” he said. “It gave updates with the fire and seems like it has everything on it.”

According to Fuhrmann, use of MyVCCCD is well underway, with approximately one-fourth of the district’s student population creating functional accounts. By the spring 2010 semester, all students will be required to access Webstar via the portal.

To create a MyVCCCD account, go to my.vcccd.edu and click on the Sign Up for an Account icon, then follow the provided instructions.