TCC’s transition from CampusCruiser to the myTCC portal is ultimately a good idea, but it doesn’t seem to be right now.
The most glaring problem from the first two weeks of the fall semester was its new email system. After transitioning from CampusCruiser to a system powered by Gmail, students had to reset their passwords because WebAdvisor, the program that keeps students’ login information, wouldn’t share with Gmail and, one would assume, couldn’t be made to.
However, because those passwords were encrypted, students had to wait for at least 24 hours while their passwords were decrypted so that all of their passwords would line up and they could finally access their email.
The end result is almost 50,000 students who mostly hadn’t been on their TCC accounts over the summer receiving a rude surprise when they arrived at school and couldn’t access their email accounts.
TCC email accounts are vital to students. Often, it’s the primary line of communication with teachers, and it’s the main way to get TCC alerts and scholarship information. Locking students and teachers out for at least a day isn’t the way to start a semester.
According to associate vice chancellor of operations Richard Sullivan, this kind of transition in any other college this size would take six months, but TCC couldn’t implement this at any time other than early August between the summer and fall semesters.
So … couldn’t officials at least have started decrypting passwords in advance so students could access their email? This delay has caused a litany of problems, and it seems they could have been avoided with some forethought.
That isn’t mentioning the spotty transitioning of emails from students’ CampusCruiser accounts to their myTCC accounts. Emails still on CampusCruiser would transfer sometimes and wouldn’t others, emails would be received by the CampusCruiser account instead of myTCC, and most students still don’t know how to work the new system. It was, and still is, a mess.
The end result is a better system for the students to use. By the end of the month, according to distance learning director Kevin Eason, all the logins will be coordinated so logging in to one part of the online complex will log students in to all other parts as well, and that will be nice.
MyTCC email has much more online storage than CampusCruiser had, so emails won’t be bumped from the system as quickly. Most important, students can access email through their cell phones and tablets, something they could not do under the old system, which will greatly increase student communication on the move.
TCC is onto something here. They’ve listened to students and are opening communication lines that will make the college more accessible.
Once everything is said and done, students will have more methods than ever to get in touch with faculty and for the college to let students know about emergencies and other information.
But with a first impression that wasn’t great, myTCC will have to make itself worthwhile.
