Thanks to the efforts of the Information Technology Services (ITS) at EC, logging onto the MyECC portal will be a drastically altered experience on July 1.

Set to go live in time for summer classes, the new portal aims to increase the reliability and stability of the portal while adding new features that students will find intuitive and useful, John Wagstaff, director of Information Technology Services (ITS), said.

“We’ve had an enormously positive reaction to it. From all of the faculty and board members, we’ve gotten the impression that they just wanted us to go for it, so instead of releasing in the Fall like we originally planned, the new MyECC will be debuting over the summer,” Wagstaff said.

Though the open beta has been available for some time, the portal now reflects the coming permanent upgrade.

It alerts the user to the coming changes on July 1st, and even has a “What you should know before logging on to the new MyECC” page which gives students helpful tips.

In addition to that, an email has been sent out to all students’ EC e-mail accounts about the new MyECC.

And that may have been necessary, as many students still do not know that a new MyECC is in the works.

“I had no idea there was a new MyECC until I checked my EC email, but I used the old MyECC to register and drop classes and check my grades,” Kristopher Leong, 19, business major.

“I don’t know about any beta for MyECC, but I hope they fix the log in and loading issues,” said Ian La Charite, 19, geology major.

There are some issues with the open beta of MyECC, particularly, the speed with which the WebAdvisor, calender, and e-mail pop up on the page, which can sometimes take up to 30 seconds, and in other instances load instantly.

“We’re watching the slowness closely, it’s very complicated, but we’re doing what we can to maintain reliability and stability. This is a new experience for us, Microsoft SharePoint is new for us,” Wagstaff said.

Despite that, new features of the portal will improve how students and teachers interact, with a virtual space created for any course section if a teacher requests it, allowing students and the teacher to comment on documents, turn in assignments, or just discuss things within the context of the class, Wagstaff said.

“Unified communication is something everyone’s chasing. This is the next wave of the future. Soon, all you’ll need to access Word, Excel, or any other program will be a web browser. The new MyECC is a part of that. This is the biggest technological shift since 1977, it’s the next big thing,” said Wagstaff.

Bristling with excitement and enthusiasm, Wagstaff is very proud of the job his team in the ITS has done.

“We’re really excited for it. We think it will provide students with a much richer experience than they have now. It will be a fun next year. We’re doing something really special and we’re really excited for the official launch. If there are any issues, we’ll solve them,” Wagstaff said.