Davidson County Community College

THOMASVILLE — Davidson County Community College is ranked eighth nationally in digital excellence for midsize community colleges, according to the Center for Digital Education.

The center announced the winners of its 2017-18 Digital Community Colleges Survey. Now in its 13th year, the Digital Community Colleges Survey analyzes how community colleges use a range of technologies to improve services to students, faculty, staff and the community at large.

Davidson County Community College moved up two places in the rankings from last year. Donald Beck, director of information technology services, accepted the award on behalf of the college at the annual American Association of Community Colleges Annual Conference.

“The top-10 winning colleges reflect a comprehensive implementation of technology supporting the educational institution’s operations, as well as serving students, faculty and administrators,” said Janet Grenslit, director of surveys and awards of the Center for Digital Excellence.

The national survey revealed insights about community colleges’ technology priorities. Colleges surveyed indicated that mobility devices and app support is their top priority for the coming year, followed by cybersecurity tools and testing, website redesign and updates, upgrading classroom technologies, digital content and curriculum, and disaster recovery and business continuity.

The survey revealed that 34 percent of colleges have a strategy in place for the use of mobile devices; 35 percent have a full-time chief information security officer or similar full-time staff member in charge of cybersecurity; 71 percent of the colleges’ websites have responsive web design; and 88 percent of colleges have off-site data storage redundancies in place.