A student studies online with remote learning supported by a cloud-based student SIS.

Learn how this institution supported students and faculty during a pandemic


Q&A with Matthew Weitzel, IT Project Lead, Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design

IT leaders at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design started a cloud-based transformation before the global coronavirus health pandemic shuttered physical campus operations and moved instruction online.

With that transformation, the institution was prepared when forced to move quickly and support students, faculty, and staff in its abrupt shift to all-online operations.

Related content: What every student should know about online learning

Here, Matthew Weitzel, RMCAD’s IT project lead, discusses the institution’s IT priorities and goals.

Q: What was the goal of Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design’s (RMCAD) IT transformation before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and how did it evolve over the past few months?

Since 1963, our Denver-based college’s mission has been to make RMCAD a “community of creatives” that instills in all students a passion for creativity, innovation, and a desire for lifelong learning—both in the fine arts and applied arts. Similar to many other higher education institutions, we recognized the value of moving our systems to the cloud prior to the pandemic, however “social distancing” was not part of anyone’s lexicon at the time.

Our initial goal with the cloud-based transformation centered around the idea of serving a greater diversity of students, offering more program flexibility, allocating more resources around student success, and having a platform that could easily grow with them. Now it’s a critical factor in our ability to deliver education and training as an essential service. Now offering both on-ground, online, and hybrid programs as a result of our proactive IT transformation, our team was ready to pivot to fully online operations when the pandemic hit.

Q: How did RMCAD respond to rapidly-changing dynamics and student needs once COVID-19 began to take hold?

From the time the pandemic hit, we’ve had a laser focus on safely maintaining academics, operations and student engagement. With the right technologies in place – Campus Management CampusNexus Student Web Client along with and the Ready Education mobile app – we were able to extend our full campus experience to our constituents’ smartphones and mobile devices as well as ensure data integrity across all departments and systems that were transitioning to the web client for cloud access.

Q: Why did RMCAD decide to migrate to a cloud-based solution with fully integrated capabilities for its student information system?

Only a few years ago, our institution’s student information system – Campus Management CampusNexus Student – connected to our overall IT system through a Citrix interface layer, with staff and faculty workstations configured to that thick-client platform. But issues started to arise when our IT team provisioned new personal laptops for the college’s faculty and staff. When we tried to connect the newly removed users over VPN, we started having Citrix and browser-related issues, which had to be resolved on a case-by-case basis. We needed a simpler solution to help save time and get people working in CampusNexus Student again ASAP. We decided to transition to Campus Management’s new cloud-based, pure web-client system built on Microsoft Azure.

Even though we weren’t fully live with the web client when our campus closed due to the pandemic, we were close because we realized early on that the more people we could push to the web during the transition, the more ready we would be when we eventually switched over to full web client within the next couple of years. Plus, this solution bypassed our Citrix Receiver related issues, and our staff found they enjoyed the CampusNexus Student Web Client UX.

Q: How was RMCAD able to deliver all of its programs online amid the pandemic crisis?

By the time the pandemic hit, our cloud-based SIS platform was already integrated with the college’s LMS system. As a result, all we had to do was build a few more class sections in CampusNexus and the LMS picked them up. With a bit of dedicated work, the asynchronous ground courses had an LMS component to them. That was an advantage we had having already built out an online student modality years prior.

In the face of the health crisis, our on-ground/hybrid student experience was quickly converted to a blended learning model, combining online educational materials with traditional, face-to-face student/teacher interaction, albeit online. As of March 16, all students had made the transition from on-ground courses to fully online learning. It was a nearly seamless transition, with negligible difference in course content, assignments, and discussions.

Q: How did RMCAD extend the full campus experience to students with mobile device access?

To communicate effectively with our students, our team made the decision in 2019 to extend the full campus experience to constituents’ smartphones/mobile devices, from administrative functions for faculty and staff using CampusNexus, to academics and services for students through the college’s LMS and portal. We essentially had to build a mobile community online. We partnered with Ready Education, as it would have taken much longer and been much more expensive to develop the mobile app in-house. With their fully built templates and years of experience integrating with CampusNexus, we went from nothing to a fully launched v1.0 mobile app in six months.

Amid the pandemic and beyond, RMCAD students and staff now have access to all their apps and contacts and receive all COVID-19 info and advisories pushed to their mobile devices from our institution. They still have nearly the full campus experience at their fingertips. Of course, they wouldn’t want to type an entire term paper on their cellphones, but they can easily upload files (including the huge multimedia files that our design students create as part of their assignments), connect with their peers and professors, collaborate and critique, and review their schedules and grades.

Q: How is RMCAD continuing to support its constituents given ever-changing dynamics during the pandemic?

One of RMCAD’s students recently tweeted this: “It is so important to create right now to keep your mind off of everything that is going on in the world and help bring a smile to someone else’s face during these trying times.” With students now having our institution and their campus experience still at their fingertips, these current and future artists can continue to flourish in the best of times, 2020…and beyond.

Sign up for our newsletter

Newsletter: Innovations in K12 Education
By submitting your information, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

eCampus News Staff

Oops! We could not locate your form.

Sign up for our newsletter

Newsletter: Innovations in K12 Education
By submitting your information, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.