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Editorial: Online portal is an important resource for teachers and students
The MHCC portal, or MyMHCC, is a portion of the website that allows students to pay bills, register for classes and most importantly connects students with their teachers and fellow classmates.
The Advocate feels that teachers use the portal effectively when they post syllabi, lecture dates, current grades, reminders for important or large assignments and updates for changing due dates on assignments. By doing this they enable students to have important class information at their fingertips.
For example, say you lost the syllabus for your MTH095 class. You could simply go online and print it out, ensuring you get the right homework assignment due for tomorrow's class.
Now not all teachers utilize the portal as a resource for their courses. For example, it may make sense that an art teacher under-utilizes the portal, but we at The Advocate would like teachers in subjects that all students must take such as writing, math and science to be well versed in the use of the portal.
Having teachers who are up to date on how to navigate the portal will make it easier for teaching students how to use it.
In fact we feel that if teachers use the portal frequently, then they should make sure students understand how to properly access the portal at the beginning of a term.
"Once (instructors) get used to it and learn it they seem to do fine. It seems to be the newer instructors who need a little more instruction on where to find things, the difference between their grade book they keep on the portal versus grade entry which is somewhere else. There seems to be a little bit of a learning curve but once they get it they seem to do pretty well," said Darcy Dalrymple, coordinator of student records, admissions, registration and records.
As much as it is important for teachers to incorporate portal use into their teaching, it is equally important that students take advantage of the portal functions. We feel that students should be using it as a resource as it will help maintain communication between them and their instructors and keep them accountable to assignments and deadlines.
Another reason teachers and students should take advantage of the portal is because it's a mobile resource that can be accessed wherever one can use the Internet. Nowadays many people have smart phones and can easily and quickly access the website and portal when they need information about a class.
The more informed students are of assignments and other updates, the better they will perform in class. Many teachers take time to post examples of essays and post resources for research, articles and videos that may be helpful to an assignment. Some teachers even post outlines of what essays and bibliographies should look like. They post homework and practice exercises that may help the student expand their knowledge on a subject.
The portal is a great resource for both students and teachers so long as both parties are properly utilizing it. That being said, it means that while teachers need to keep the portal up to date with all the important information for a class, students should make a point to use the information to their benefits.
The Advocate reserves the right to not publish comments based on their appropriateness.