San Antonio College
Challenge
San Antonio College, the largest in the Alamo Colleges community college system and one of the largest in the U.S. with more than 26,000 students, prides itself on staying abreast of the latest technology. But that’s easier said than done.
“We’d bring teachers in one Saturday a month to train and it was a lot of information,” said Mona Aldana-Ramirez, Director of Student Success. “They would leave here and they had that feeling of ‘Wow, how are we going to remember this information?’ “
At the same time, the college also experienced an enrollment boom as the economy worsened, and sometimes students and prospective students would call the college for information and be on hold for long periods of time.
Solution
With an emergent technology grant, Aldana-Ramirez began using Mediasite to train teachers and call-center employees. Faculty simply receive the link to the training video and can review it on-demand at their convenience without cutting into teaching time.
“The college is able to save precious resources by creating one training session and making it available on-demand for review at any time,” Aldana-Ramirez said. “That time and money saved can be spent on the most important aspect of the school – the students.”
To speed up the call center, the college created a call-intercept center and trained agents online with Mediasite webcasts about how to answer frequently asked questions and route them quickly to the appropriate resource.
Victory
Using Mediasite, training at San Antonio College serves students in two distinct, indirect ways. Making the call center more efficient allows students to spend less time waiting on the phone, and training faculty on their own time, at their own pace means more effective use of class time.
“I haven’t stopped singing Mediasite’s praises…Mediasite allows me to be many different places at once. It has helped us tremendously on the operation side of the college to be able to train our people more efficiently without me having to go face to face.”
