Case Studies: Mobile Devices and Embedded Applications
Using Aton Connect in the College Registrar’s Office
Northwest Vista College (NVC) is the newest and fastest growing college in the Alamo (Texas) Community College District.
The college began offering classes in 1995, broke ground on its new 137-acre campus in 1996 and is well on its way toward a projected enrollment of 11,500 by the year 2015.
“Staff
using the Axim with Aton Connect are very pleased with the ability to access student records wirelessly...” Felix Salinas
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NVC offers classes that run a full semester and also classes that run on “Flex” schedules, two flex periods per semester.
This flexibility creates some real challenges for the Registrar's office. Even with web and phone registration, rapid growth and flexible schedules have resulted in long
student lines during registration.
How to Get More Work Done
The Registrar needed a low cost, quick to implement method to assist students with questions during registration
. Because student records are managed centrally on mainframes hosted by the State of Texas IT, the Registrar needed an easy, low cost way to access student
records on the mainframes. An additional consideration was mobility --- allowing the registrar's staff to
assist students standing in line rather than incurring the expense of setting up additional office spaces.
Low Cost Solution
The answer was Aton Connect for Windows Mobile Pocket PC running on the Dell Axim X5 which connects wirelessly to NVC's LAN.
The registrar's staff carry the Axim out to the line of waiting students. Very quickly, they are able to answer routine questions and confirm that students
have successfully registered for classes while they are standing in line. This reduces the size of the
line, the amount of time students need to wait and channels only those students requiring additional assistance into the registrar's office.
“Staff using the Axim with Aton Connect are very pleased with the ability to access student records wirelessly.
The new landscape mode displays more data to reduce the amount of scrolling required to read the screen. The Axim connects to our wireless network using gateway appliance from
Blue Socket that protects the security of our data and network. We are really happy with the performance” commented Felix Salinas, LAN Administrator.
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