Tag Archives: events

Office of Institutional Planning and Diversity (OIPD)

Stakeholder: Jennifer Herrera
Website: http://www.middlebury.edu/campuslife/diversity
WebRedo Contact: Ryan Kellett / Pooja Shahani

General: OIPD has a variety of separate constituencies embedded within this larger area. International Student & Scholar Services has their own Stakeholder report. ADA (http://www.middlebury.edu/campuslife/diversity/ada/) and Institutional Research (http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/instres/) are included in this report.

Requirements:

  • Maintain support for the recently completed IPD flash site (highly branded, front-end site) (http://sandcat.middlebury.edu/comm/OIPD/)
  • Events Scheduling: IPD requests a better way to push events information for Cafecito hours and other diversity-related events to internal audiences, in particular students. This can be accomplished through a news feed (RSS). When an event changes, IPD requests an automatic event notification that alerts people to the change. IPD is willing to reduce email blasts if events feed is effective.
  • Forms: a dynamic customizable form that can be used by students to apply for co-sponsorship funding. There needs to be a better way and interface for accessing the data collected from these forms because it’s hard to understand the datafields that come back through email currently. Form should be more easily accessible by students.
  • CMS: Easier, better, and more-flexible CMS. Spellcheck within CMS?
  • Website font too small. Easier way to increase font size.
  • Sharing: IPD requests ability to share relavent articles from around the web with visitors of the site.
  • ADA Office:
    • The webpage must be meaningfully accessible e.g. work with screen readers and have tags that truly describe photos and the like.
    • Some people have had trouble “noticing” the page links to the left of my current site… they actually think that the only information for the ADA Office is on the first page that comes up. Can we make the links more obvious? Perhaps list the links on the actual page instead of to the right or left of it?
    • The ADA Policy is fairly long so it is helpful to be able to click on a section link and be directed to that section… that is currently the set-up and I’d like to make sure it stays that way.
  • Institutional Research: As you might expect, we do a lot of reporting on our website-it is a place where external folks, such as colleagues at our peer schools, find details they need about Middlebury and where our staff and faculty can find info they may need in their work. At a basic level, we need the site to have a place for all the items there currently, such as Factbooks, CDSs, National Surveys, etc. We need a place for posting just things for internal viewing (also similar to what we have now). My hope is that the IR site would continue to be an easily accessible, clear place to find data and reports that external and internal “customers” need.

    In terms of wishes, one enhancement to the internal part of the site may be dedicated to Self-Study/Re-accreditation work (depending on how it is decided to set things up for this campus-wide work). Other enhancements may be to post or link to some of the items Jenn Nuceder works on, for example with regard to MIIS reports.

Events and Scheduling Office

Stakeholder: Lisa Ayers
Current: http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/schedule/
WebRedo Contact: Ryan Kellett

General: Events Scheduling and Information Office has the goal of integrating the scheduling and sharing events information with the Middlebury College campus. It serves as the Functional Administrator of Resource 25 (fully hosted by Midd) for facilities and events scheduling management, maintains the “Events at Middlebury” website (http://cat.middlebury.edu/events/ ), and produces the table tent dining hall calendars.  The Master Location Schedule (http://r25web.middlebury.edu/wv3midd/wv3_servlet/urd/run/wv_space.DayList) is a component of Resource 25, also maintained by the Events Scheduling Office.  The Guide to Academic Facilities website (http://cat.middlebury.edu/events/facilities/) maintained by LIS, is linked to Resource 25 and is utilitized extensively by the campus community.  The work flow for scheduling is managed through a series of online forms, recently upgraded using sites.middlebury.edu and soon to be shared with the campus.

Goals:
  • Resource 25: Keep CollegeNET’s R25 in increased capacity. CollegeNET’s goal is to be 100% web based by 2011.  A component of the current version of R25, Webservices, has not yet been implemented.  Webservices will be necessary to advance our use of R25.  25Live is a recent release from CollegeNET and will allow for many of the advancements that are desired for Events at Middlebury (http://corp.collegenet.com/depts/higher_ed/series/25Live/ ). Using a vendor with the technical support offered by this option allows for a reduction in support required from Middlebury’s web management staff and sustainability when there is Middlebury staff turnover.
  • One Stop Shop: R25 must be deployed in such a way that every dept, office, and stakeholder buys-into it its use as the universal scheduler. Currently, too many redundant efforts are made to recreate calendars separate from R25. This contributes to errors and inaccuarcies in event information and prohibits communication when late changes are made that require notification (change of time, location, cancellations, etc.)
  • Event Marketing and Campus Announcements: The Events at Middlebury site should be enhanced to serve as a tool for distribution of College Announcements, highlighting key events information and bring comfort to events planners that their events are being advertised in such a way as to change behaviors and reduce or eliminate the needs for All Campus emails for this purpose.
  • Event Feed: Users should be able to use event feeds for whatever purpose they choose. RSS and iCal support are highly encouraged such that users do not have to use Outlook. Feeds can also be placed on CMS pages and pulled into individual portals. Departments should be able to to pull information from R25 for their department sites as needed to facilitate a one entry point calendaring process.  This would allow for accuracy and consistency of information while enabling an appearance of a specialized calendar for those departments who desire a calendar presented on their web site.  Events information should be able to be shared with users in such a way as to allow for attention to be brought to events of each users’ interest as opposed to them having to weed through a long list to find their interests.   All of these tools should be supported in such a way as to advance in concert with technology changes to continue to bring value to the students and departments and reduce the possibilities of underground calendars being developed because Middlebury’s no longer serves the needs of the changing population and the technical advances.
  • Facilities View: Easy and fast CMS updates to view spaces on campus. Also, need for multimedia presentation of spaces (photos, videos, and configurations of tables/chairs) and the support to keep this information current. Also dynamic listing of room features (smart classrooms, technologies that is clearly understood by the lay person considering space options prior to reserving a room).
  • Master Location Schedule: Continue to offer to the campus
  • Events at Middlebury: Major redesign for ease-of-use with multiple views (month, week, day). Need to preserve sortability by categories and depts. Equal representation of events (“objectivity”) such that no event is advertised better than another.
  • External Events calendaring:  Enable a separate calendar that allows for marketing of off site events (such as those planned by College Advancement, Admissions, etc.)
  • Multimedia: ability to pair pictures or other media with an event so that it can be marketed with that media. It is more attractive on Events at Middlebury website. Must be user-uploaded pictures.
  • Payment system: allow for a built-in payment system to register and pay for events. Some box office functionality.
  • Event Alerts: opt-in/opt-out alert system (email? or message to portal?) for event changes and cancellations
  • Broadcasting: Broadcast “Today’s Events & Today’s Announcements” visually at other places on campus at physical locations (grille, library, dining halls). And/or one daily email announcement with direct feed from R25.
  • Security/Privacy: segment views of events for faculty, staff, students, other. Protect certain events from being over-attended.
  • Monterey: Enable these features to be used by Monterey as they are already sharing R25

Rohatyn Center for Int’l Affairs (RCFIA)

Stakeholder: Allison Stanger and Charlotte Tate
Current: http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/rcfia
WebRedo Contact: Ryan Kellett

General: The RCFIA is a key part of the college’s international outlook and co-curricular activities for undergraduate students. It hosts numerous lecture events throughout the year, many of which are filmed and archived online. It also is an intellectual center for faculty to publish white papers and exchange ideas. Students have the opportunity to do research and apply for research grants. RCFIA publishes an annual report.

Web: RCFIA is generally satisfied with its current web presence which focuses primarily on being a repository of online videos. This rich content serves as a record but also as a marketing tool. University Channel and iTunes U is used to distribute some of these online videos for public consumption beyond viewing them on their website. Students primarily use the site to access forms for research grants and to access faculty pages. Faculty use the site to circulate white papers and view previous video content.

Next Gen:

  • Website Navigation: RCFIA likes the current organization of content (as it was reorganized 18 months ago)
  • Multimedia: reduce the barriers to access some of RCFIA’s multimedia content
  • Frontpage: dynamic front page (slideshow?) would be nice
  • Events Calendar: RCFIA currently maintains its own CMS version of their events. These are redundant inputs of information that exists in Resource 25 calendaring system used to book spaces and events across campus. Ideally, a new website will pull information directly from R25 and display it on the CMS page so that there is an accurate schedule and archive of RCFIA events. It would be nice for these events to be tied to multimedia archive as well — pairing a video with the completed event.
  • Broadcast vs. Subscription Model: Currently, RCFIA feels it is necessary to broadcast its information on upcoming events. It chooses a selective group of “internationally inclined” students, faculty, and staff to update via email. A new version of the website might help RCFIA move toward less reliance on email and more reliance on a subcription model (for example, RSS feeds) for getting information to the college community.
  • Diverse audience: lecture-attendees vary drastically in age. How can RCFIA reach a wide variety of people with varying technology skills.
  • Cross-branding: RCFIA is open to Middlebury “international” cross-branding such that the Monterey Institute, Language Schools, Study Abroad, International Studies (IS) major, and International Politics and Economics (IPE) major can tie into their website. This cross-branding, however, should be automated content from other places.
  • Application forms: RCFIA currently has several forms on their website for applying to research grants, etc. These must continue to be supported or replaced by a dynamic form to collect data to be processsed as part of an application. The same technology can be used to collect data on visitors both, physical and virtual, to the RCFIA.

Notes:

  • Prof. Stanger recommends a feature to push professor office hours directly into a student portal