Montgomery College improves learning by bringing technology into classrooms across three campuses and saves money by streamlining procurement •  Connected Classroom

•  Flexible Computing

“ When the Middle States Accreditation Team completed their accreditation visit in 2008, they made a point of praising the technology we have in our classrooms. The Smart Stations make Montgomery College look good.”

Doug Griffith, Director of Instructional Technology, Montgomery College

Customer Profile

Company: Montgomery College

Industry: Education

Country: United States

Students: 60,000

Faculty and Staff: 1,660

Web: www.montgomerycollege.edu

Institutional Need Montgomery College routinely deployed new “Smart Stations” in classrooms across its three campuses. Each station consisted of a desktop computer, a projector, a document camera and a DVD player/VCR. The technology was popular with instructors, but they required an excess of training because the equipment and user interface varied between classrooms. Moreover, procurement and maintenance of the systems was time-consuming for internal IT staff.

Solution The college engaged Dell™ partner Mediatech to build custom desks to house the Smart Station equipment. Mediatech also helped Montgomery College establish a technology standard so that all Smart Stations across its three campuses use the same interface. Now new Smart Stations include Dell OptiPlex™ desktop computers, and Dell Merge Center eliminates complexity from the procurement process.

  Benefits

•  High demand for Smart Station classrooms among faculty  and students 

•  Simplified integration of Smart Stations into curricula through standardized interface

•  IT staff time reclaimed on Smart Station planning, procurement  and support

•  IT staff time reclaimed on  faculty training

•  Cost savings realized by consolidating procurement through Dell

•  Faster Smart Station deployment because of Dell Merge Center

“ If you measure the Smart Stations’ success based on demand from students and faculty, they’re highly successful. The classrooms with the Smart Stations are in use all day, every day.” Doug Griffith, Director of Instructional Technology, Montgomery College

Although the curriculum varies widely, instructors across the gamut want to incorporate technology into their classes. In the 1990s, Montgomery College began providing shared laptop/media carts so that faculty could use computers with portable data projectors for certain lessons. Then in 1998, the school began installing permanent Smart Stations in some classrooms. The stations consisted of a computer, a projector, a screen, a document camera (digital overhead) and a combination DVD player/VCR.

“We originally put the stations in about 50 classrooms,” Griffith says. “They were very progressive back then, and over time they became very popular with our faculty. Soon, the rooms with this equipment became highly sought-after by our instructors, so we grew the concept from there.”

Setting the standard

Several years later, as Smart Station rollouts continued, Montgomery College decided to standardize equipment in order to simplify Smart Station procurement, implementation and use. The college turned to Dell for an end-to-end procurement solution, and Dell engaged its partner Mediatech, which also custom-builds furniture to support connected classrooms.

“Mediatech helped us develop a standardized user interface for all of these systems so that once our instructors learned to use the Smart Station in one classroom, they could use the equipment in any of our rooms,” Griffith says. “We took a good look at

the technology we wanted to have, and we committed to putting it into as many classrooms as could accommodate it.”

The college standardized so that each Smart Station consists of a Dell OptiPlex 780 desktop computer, a Samsung visual presenter (document camera), a Sony DVD player/VCR, an Epson HD projector, an interface for laptop connection and a custom desk built by Mediatech. Montgomery College consolidated procurement of all this Smart Station equipment with Dell.

Every year, Montgomery College in Montgomery County, Maryland educates 60,000 students in diverse subjects ranging from aerospace design to landscape technology, from automotive electrical systems to studio arts to arson investigation. In fact, the school’s three campuses offer associate’s degrees and certificate programs in more than 100 subject areas. “Our course content runs the gamut from general preparation of students for transfer to four-year colleges to very specific programs in areas like nursing, engineering and computer graphics,” explains Doug Griffith, Director of Instructional Technology.

Technology at Work

Services

Dell™ Merge Center

Hardware

Dell OptiPlex™ 780 desktop computers with Intel® Core 2 Duo®

processors

Epson HD projector

Mediatech custom-built desk

Samsung document camera

Sony DVD player/VCR

Software

Adobe® Creative Suite®

Autodesk® AutoCAD®

MathWorks® MATLAB®

Microsoft® Windows® XP

PTC® Pro/ENGINEER®

“In the past, we bought furniture from one vendor, VCRs from another vendor, projectors from a third vendor and computers from a fourth vendor, then somebody else installed it all,” says Griffith. “We ran a splintered environment where we had to call five different people if something went wrong with a piece of equipment. What Dell and Mediatech offered us was one primary point of contact for every situation.”

Together, the three Montgomery College campuses now have 272 Smart Stations. For classrooms that aren’t large enough to accommodate a full-size Smart Station, Mediatech and Montgomery College developed a Tier II Smart Station, which has a smaller footprint. They also developed a mobile Smart Station on a laptop cart. “Working with Mediatech has helped us gain flexibility for our Smart Stations, even as we adhere to our standard,” says Griffith.

Smart Stations mean  smarter curricula

All the Smart Stations offer the same user interface, which makes them familiar to instructors who teach different classes in different rooms. As a result, faculty members are using the Smart Stations more often and more creatively than they were when equipment differed substantially from room to room.

“It’s an advantage for our faculty to know that all the Smart Stations they will encounter in different classrooms have the same interface,” Griffith says. “Many instructors are now using Smart Stations to thoughtfully integrate technology into their curricula. We’ve seen them find some very creative uses for the document cameras and projectors. For example, English department faculty are using the document camera to project student papers onto the classroom whiteboard, enabling the class to edit the papers as a group. And science faculty members use the document cameras to project objects such as DNA strand models and to show test-tube experiments in chemistry labs.”

Standardization has reduced the amount of training that the college needs to provide for instructors. “IT used to provide a lot of group training and one-on-one training sessions,” says Griffith. “Today, we have substantially reduced the amount of IT staff time devoted to Smart Station training. Now, more of the training on campus occurs when faculty teach one another to use the technology in a pedagogical sense.”

Demand up, costs down

Montgomery College is saving money by consolidating procurement with Dell. “We’ve reduced our costs by leveraging Dell’s purchasing power,” says Griffith. “Buying all our different Smart Station components through Dell enables us to take advantage of economies of scale. In addition, we’re reducing the time we need to spend on planning, procurement and delivery logistics for our Smart Station purchases.”

The cost savings are particularly important in light of the budget crunch the college currently faces. “We’re in a budget dilemma right now,” says Griffith. “Our enrollment is increasing each semester, but we get a lot of our funding from Montgomery County, and the county’s sources of funding are down. Like other public entities—for example, public schools, fire departments and police departments—we’re facing stiff cutbacks. We need to do more with less right now.”

As Montgomery College works to do more with less, its Smart Stations help promote the institution to prospective faculty and students. “Every ten years a team from Middle States spends a week with us, evaluating how we do things, as part of the state accreditation process,” says Griffith. “When the Middle States Accreditation Team completed their accreditation visit in 2008, they made a point of praising the technology we have in our classrooms. The Smart Stations contributed significantly to the positive assessment of College technology.”

Both students and faculty now expect classrooms to include Smart Stations. “We haven’t performed studies to

“ Dell provides great products through an efficient process. Other vendors usually can’t provide the standard we’ve established with Dell and Mediatech.” Doug Griffith, Director of Instructional Technology, Montgomery College

quantify the effect of technology on learning,” says Griffith. “But if you measure the Smart Stations’ success based on demand from students and faculty, they’re highly successful. The classrooms with the Smart Stations are in use all day, every day. It’s hard to find a time to perform maintenance work on the systems.”

Streamlining IT support for  Smart Stations

For the IT department, standardization means streamlined support of the Smart Stations. “From a support standpoint, maintaining this equipment is straightforward because we have specific, direct ways to contact Mediatech,” says Griffith. “We’ve worked out ahead of time how to handle different types of support calls. That makes support much more efficient for our IT staff.”

Rollout of new Smart Stations continues as Montgomery College adds buildings, remodels existing facilities and refreshes some of the original Smart Station installations. The college can continue expanding its base of Smart Stations efficiently, thanks to the combination of Mediatech implementation and advisory services and Dell’s Merge Center, which assembles the components of each Smart Station before shipping the equipment on to the college.

“In the old days, we had electronics, cabling and furniture delivered from separate vendors,” says Griffith. “We’d end up waiting for various pieces of equipment and worrying about whether all the parts were ready for the installers. Now Dell Merge Center does that for us. We no longer have to receive and store several shipments to get the equipment for one

room. Instead, IT staff on one of our campuses can confirm they received the equipment one day, and the next day Mediatech can start installing it.”

Implementation by Mediatech greatly improves the efficiency of each Smart Station deployment. “My team is here to support the technology,” Griffith says. “They’re busy supporting the IT needs of academic and administrative functions across all three campuses. If they had to do installation work for the Smart Stations, it would pull them away from their other duties. We don’t have enough staff to do that. Plus, our deployments involve more than just making a few components work together. We regularly re-evaluate our standard for the equipment. We value the help of experts, and that’s the role Mediatech plays for us.”

Extending successes is just smart

Now Montgomery College is working with Mediatech to develop Smart Station desks that are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. “Mediatech gave us a prototype,” says Griffith. “We are evaluating the station in a single classroom and will collect user input to assist in determining future implementation.”

Although it is strict about adherence to the Smart Station standard, Montgomery College does consider alternatives to Dell. “We take a look at other technology providers from time to time,” says Griffith. “But other vendors’ solutions are either not as fully formed in terms of functionality, or else they don’t adhere to the standard we’ve created. Dell provides great products through an efficient process. Other vendors usually can’t provide the standard we’ve established with Dell and Mediatech.”

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© May 2011. Intel and Intel Core 2 Duo are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States or other countries. This case study is for informational purposes only. DELL MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS CASE STUDY. Reference number: 10009143

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