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District to streamline online communication with students

Tim Toton

The Los Angeles Community College District will deploy Outlook and other Microsoft web applications at Pierce College to standardize student emails, enable greater collaboration and provide students with 35GB of combined storage by this summer.

Joseph D. Perret, professor of Computer Applications and Office Technologies at Pierce, is happy with what Microsoft Outlook and SkyDrive will bring students.

“Some of the benefits are calendaring, contacts and a to-do list,” Perret said.

Albert Saryan, supervising system and programming analyst for LACCD, provided an official list of what students will have access to through the system:

The LACCD wants to use the emails, which are already available to students, to maintain “a constant and reliable means of communication between the campuses and the students,” Saryan said.

Students will be notified the week following spring break the mandatory accounts are available, according to Public Relations Manager Doreen Clay.

Also, don’t look for an “app for that.” Saryan definitively said there will be no mobile app for LACCD emails or web applications. He suggested students use whatever method they may use to access live.com to check email on the go.

Perret, who assisted with the new email system, agrees with the district wanting more control of student’s emails.

“Students are recalcitrant entering an email in the system and they change them frequently too,” Perret said.

The system currently hosts roughly 20,000 users daily across the nine LACCD campuses with a provision of 500,000 accounts, Saryan said.

Deandre Allen, 22, was surprised by the new mandatory student emails but had a wishlist of items he’d like to see it provide.

“Grade percentage, syllabus, class notes. . . If they could make it into an app then it would probably be perfect for everybody,” Allen said.

Another student, Edith Dominguez, 20, does know about the new email and echoes another benefit not known by many.

“I heard about it because when I login for your student information it says that you have a new email and I think it’s good because if you have a college email you get a discount,” Dominguez said.

Indeed, free stuff and discounts abound with a student.laccd.edu address. Here is a handful of what students can get for using their school email:

There are also students, however, who use one of the big free email services like Yahoo or Gmail and worry about having to check multiple places for important emails.

“I would really like if it would just forward to my normal email,” said 18-year-old student Oriel Sastiel.

To forward emails to Yahoo or Gmail easily, login to your student email, click “Options” then “See All Options” then “Forward your e-mail” on the right menu.

Perret recommends students leave a copy of the forwarded emails on their school server as a protection against accidental deletion.

With SkyDrive cloud storage, students can upload files from anywhere and access them from anywhere they have an internet connection.

The Starter Guide says files are even available via most mobile devices, although the guide does not specifically mention a mobile phone app.

Students will be able to create multiple Outlook calendars and toggle the privacy settings for each one separately. They are set to private by default, and changing this setting allows entered events to be shared.

Student email accounts will be deactivated after two missed terms, according to Saryan.

“The email account is provided to students who have active enrollment,” he said.

How do I login to my new student email account?

Where do I find the LACCD email start guide and FAQ?

Where do I get free stuff and discounts with my new email?

What is the protocol for deleting the email accounts?

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