‘My Catalog’ Feature Allows Students to Customize to Their Interests, Needs
LA PLATA, Md.—The College of Southern Maryland has made its 2012-14 Catalog accessible online at http://catalog.csmd.edu/. The catalog contains information on all CSM associate’s degree, certificate and letter of recognition programs from accounting to women’s studies including course descriptions, academic calendar, admissions, financial assistance, student support services and campus facilities.
“The catalog is the college’s most important publication. It is rich with information that every student or potential student needs to know. By putting this publication online we are able ensure that students can get the information they need, when they need it, through a much easier to use format. I know our students are going to love the change,” said Vice President of Student and Instructional Support Services Dr. Bill Comey.
“In an effort to provide students with the most up-to-date information on CSM offerings the college has implemented a new, dynamic online catalog. The catalog allows students to search for courses or programs based on a keyword search making the information much easier to navigate,” said Senior Executive Director of Marketing Theresa Johnson. She added that the decision to move the information online allows the college to print fewer hard-copy catalogs; making it environmentally friendly and cost efficient—two additional benefits to the online catalog.
A feature, “My Catalog,” allows students to customize the catalog to reflect programs, courses and college information specific to the student’s major. Instead of dog-eared pages marking a place of pertinent information, students can search the entire catalog using keywords and save only the parts that apply to them in their My Catalog account for easy reference.
“I like the new online catalog for its ease of access and the My Catalog feature which allows you to create your own specific pages of interest,” said CSM Sophomore Christian Vieira de Andrade, of Waldorf, a general studies major who plans to transfer to pursue a communication degree.
Previously, CSM has issued its catalog every two years, but criteria for courses and programs can change prior to the next publication and this will allow for new programs to be added annually. The online catalog was redesigned and developed through the services of Digital Architecture, a higher education solutions provider delivering enabling technologies to support curriculum development and catalog publishing for colleges and universities.
“We agree the catalog is the college’s most important publication. Like CSM, our clients understand the need to meet the growing e-expectations of today’s students. Web use studies indicate that during a prospective student’s first web site visit to a school, locating information related to academics and programs of study is of primary importance, and a bad online experience may cause them to remove a school from consideration,” said Ken Blais, president of Digital Architecture. For information on Digital Architecture, visit www.digarc.com.
To access the CSM online catalog, visit http://catalog.csmd.edu/.