Trinity College

The University of Dublin, Trinity College, founded in 1592, is the oldest university in Ireland. Trinity College is the sole constituent college of the University. At present there are over 12,000 students and 1,200 staff members working on the College campus.

Lecturers at Trinity College School of Business Studies needed an easy way to distribute curriculum and course study materials to students, both at the beginning of each semester and throughout the term. They wanted to save the time and expense of distributing paper copies of these materials.

Course administrators were also looking for an easy, efficient way to post important announcements for all students to view.

The Trinity College School of Business Studies has been using WebEx WebOffice since 1999, when Business Studies Lecturer Dr. Mairead Brady set up the school’s first WebOffice.

WebEx WebOffice adoption has skyrocketed to 18 WebOffice sites since then.

The School of Business Studies uses WebEx WebOffice at all levels to distribute course curriculums, outlines, class notes, lecture notes, assignments, and grades.

WebEx WebOffice is also used by Trinity College’s Department of Computer Science and the Department of Statistics where they link with the School of Business Studies.

A WebOffice for an MBA or a Master’s Program may have only 25 or 40 members; other WebOffices serving an entire class may have as many as 300 or 400 members. “We have 1,500 students across our undergraduate program using WebOffice, at any given time,” Brady says.

"I can’t talk highly enough about WebEx. It’s a very special company. We’ve never had a problem. They’ve never let us down. It’s a super system. It’s a very simple system, but its simplicity is its biggest advantage. I’ve introduced WebEx WebOffice to other universities in Ireland and they think it’s marvelous too."

- Dr. Mairead Brady, Lecturer, The University of Dublin, Trinity College School of Business Studies

Lecturers throughout Trinity College’s School of Business Studies are using WebEx WebOffice to provide students with easy online access to course curriculums, outlines, class notes, lecture notes, assignments, and grades. “It’s an important part of what we do,” says Brady. “The savings in time, effort, and expense are dramatic.” At the beginning of each school year, students register on the WebOffice, where they can access all of the materials they need for their studies.

At least two or three days before each class, all lecturers upload their notes into the WebEx WebOffice Document Manager. It is then the students’ responsibility to download the lecture notes before they come to class.

"At the end of the year, students have everything they need for their courses in one place - the WebEx WebOffice Document Manager - for study review: Lecture notes, articles, course outline, assignments, etc.,” says Brady.

WebOffice also provides links to any articles the students need to read, and to any Web sites related to their text books. Links to business news sources - “Financial Times,” “Irish Times,” etc. - and to the school’s libraries are also posted on the WebOffice home page.

The school uses WebOffice to announce class details, tutorial councils and the ‘Business of the Year Award.’ “We tell students to look at WebOffice first, the bulletin boards in the corridors second, and their own email third,” Brady says. Many students use the WebOffice home page as their home page for the school year so as not to miss any postings or announcements.

“The course administrators couldn’t live without WebEx WebOffice,” Brady says. “Their lives have changed so much, since they’ve been using WebEx WebOffice. They manage across all courses and they manage all the academics. Instead of putting notices out to all the individual students, they can now put the notices up on WebOffice just once.”

“The most amazing thing we found about WebEx WebOffice is that no training is required to use it,” says Brady.

To test this out, the school decided to train one group of students and not train another group in using the system. There was no difference between the students that were trained on WebOffice and those that were not. “WebOffice is intuitive. Once a student goes up on the site, they are able to use it,” Brady says.

“This was amazing to us, particularly back in 2000, when we saw the whole School of Business Studies go live on WebEx WebOffice. WebOffice was so easy that even the academics who didn’t want to use an online system, just virtually had to use it. The age profile of users is from 19 to 65 years old, and yet all ages are comfortable on it.”

Brady states, “Though I am the system manager for our WebOffice, I really have very little to do, because it’s so decentralized. We are so happy that we don’t have to go to an IT manager to post documents, which would create a real log jam.”

“I can’t talk highly enough about WebEx. It’s a very special company. We’ve never had a problem. They’ve never let us down. It’s a super system. It’s a very simple system, but its simplicity is its biggest advantage. I’ve introduced WebEx WebOffice to other universities in Ireland and they think it’s marvelous too.”