Good Afternoon, thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time, please stop me at anytime and ask questions. I would like to take a few minutes today and discuss why adding an IVN lab to the TrainND department would be beneficial not only to the college but to the entire Williston Community.
Here is a brief overview of the information that I will be providing you today. We will talk about Professional Development and what it means for businesses and the community, What is an Interactive Video Network
How TrainND could meet ND’s training needs better and finally the financial obligation.
First let’s start with defining professional development. For the purpose of TrainND we define professional development as continuing education or training seminars. I have listed other definitions as well. In 2010 TrainND Northwest serviced 271 businesses in 10 counties, with 583 training sessions. A training session is a class or seminar. How does this training benefit the community? Training dollars stay in the area, TrainND is then able to add more seminars or classes, the community is able to keep the workers in the area without sending them to training out of state.
The entire state of North Dakota has been intergraded with an IVN system, this includes federal, state and local buildings. Because the state is made up of 70,000 square miles, this is a nice way of having meeting without traveling, especially during the harsh winters. How does it work. It’s rather simple to use, it allows for a two-way voice activated video system to transmit live, high quality audio and color video between several sites. For example Mayville State Community College offers graphic design, but does not have enough student enrollment to fill the class. Through the IVN system students at Williston State College, Lake Region Community College and Valley City are all able to take the class at the same time with the same instructor delivered through IVN. Here’s a little fun quote I added.
The state of ND is about 70,000 square miles with roughly 640,000 residents. Living in a rural sparsely populated state can often times mean less specialized recourse. TrainND takes great pride in providing excellent training all across our state.
Let’s take the ND parks and recreation department as an example. After reviewing survey results gathered from area visitors, they realized the entire state did not know enough about people with disabilities and how to make the parks more accessible. With the help of IVN labs seminars and trainings were delivered to the entire state at the same time. This type of training saved the departments thousands of dollars.
As TrainND grows to meet the demands of the business community there are needs we currently aren’t meeting. Many of the engineers for the oil industry are sent out of state to South Dakota or Montana for CEUs. With an IVN lab in our training facilities we could offer those classes, saving the companies thousands of dollars every year. The local veterinarians also travel out of state to keep their CEUs up to date, there are many industries that require employees to earn or update CEUs, this is a need we could be meeting with the right technology.
What’s the cost to install an IVN lab in the current TrainND facility? Actually the cost is rather minimal. To purchase the actual hardware such television monitors, web cam and sound system it would cost around $25,000. Because the staff are employees of Williston State College, they have all been trained on the equipment so staff training should be rather inexpensive as well. Marketing and collaborating the programs with other schools maybe slightly expensive but in order to make money sometimes you have to spend money. We can take the cost of marketing and the fees from the other colleges and make that part of the registration fee for the class. The companies are more than likely going to pay a slighter higher rate for a class if no travel expensive will be needed. The employee may miss one day of work instead of one for the training and two for travel.
TrainND is currently serving 271 businesses in 10 counties, if we had an IVN Lab we could easily add another 50-75 business just delivering CEU classes. This implementation cost would be passed on to the students and businesses after a few years the system would be paid for plus earn a revenue. Thank you for your time, are there any questions?