F. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
The College’s Information Technology (IT) plan focuses on supporting sustainability, maintaining infrastructure and managing data security and risk to contribute to the strategic directions of HighPerformance Organization. North West College relies on adequate investments in technology to ensure the College remains sustainable. Reducing Cyber security risk is a priority for NWC. Awareness, training, insurance and established policies will all play a role in mitigating the risk for the College. The College is in the process of implementing multi-factor authentication for its staff. The College will invest in additional measures to further reduce the risk of cyber attacks. The College continues with the use of chrome books in majority of our classrooms. Chrome books provides learners state of the art technology at a relatively less expensive cost than a typical laptop computer. Chrome books allow the College to implement student email accounts and provide the opportunity to better develop and manage alumni relations. Users and administrators manage software and data the same as a laptop, however encourages the use of google docs and other new innovative ways to manage work load. Technology in the classroom and throughout the organization remains a priority for NWC. The use of technology has allowed staff and students to remain engaged and up to date with priorities, while personal lives sometimes prevent them from coming to campus. NWC is committed to ensuring flexibility through technology to help ensure success. The College continues to work towards achieving a standardized classroom and ensuring that every classroom has modern technology. New interactive televisions allow the instructor to take a more innovative approach to teaching and free additional resources that may otherwise be tied up. As smart boards reach their end of life, the College will determine the best replacement strategy to be implemented over the next three years. The College is moving to a new inventory system to fulfill its needs. Currently the College has multiple inventory systems in place to manage the needs of all areas. Our IT inventory system is at its end of life, so a new inventory system has been introduced for all our assets. The goal was to have a system that can handle facilities infrastructure, information technology, bookstore, and inventories for all faucets of the College. Work continues to evolve on this project. In the fall of 2020, the College introduced an Education Technology Coordinator role. The focus of this role last year, was classroom based. Training instructional staff and students on the use of google classrooms and chromebooks were the main focus. While the work in these areas will continue to expand, this next year our Education Technology Coordinator will have a strategy to enhance and broaden technology knowledge focusing on our Administrative areas. In addition, the current learning management systems used at the College will be evaluated to ensure the best fit for staff, students and learning outcomes. Carlton Trail, on behalf of the regional colleges, was allocated another 2.9 million dollars towards the Higher Education Enterprise Resource Planning Project. This project will look to replace our current student information system, financial and human resources. North West College is excited to have been selected as one of the first four Colleges for implementation for this project. The College will have a need for possibly backfilling positions, managing and supporting the transition from our current system to the new.
NORTH WEST COLLEGE
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MULTI YEAR BUSINESS PLAN 2022-2025
