Tag Archives: slideshow

Alliance for Civic Engagement (ACE)

Stakeholder: Peggy Burns

Website: http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/tools/ace

Redo Contact: Ryan Kellett

ACE is the most important resource on campus faculty interested in community-connected teaching, learning, and research-and for students who are interested in volunteering, social justice issues, activism and advocacy, citizenship, and international service opportunities.  ACE should be a portal for all things service-whether curricular, co-curricular, or extra-curricular.  In the current economic climate and as health and human services statewide budget cuts take effect, community needs change regularly-and because this is an active campus in terms of service, it is important that the site is perceived as dynamic and up to date/accurate.

Specifically and generally, what do you want from a new site? (as an individual and as an office)

-To have a prominent place on the overall Middlebury College site to promote current and future community-connected teaching, learning, and research opportunities to faculty.

-To have a prominent place on the overall Middlebury College site so that students (current and prospective) as well as faculty and staff interested in community service opportunities and social justice issues can find ACE easily.

-To promote immediate community service needs in a prominent way.

-To be able to promote specific opportunities (internships, conferences, on-campus events) to students.

-To have a number of different “Channels” (like we do now) to divide up the different portions of our site, e.g. Community Service, Anti-Poverty Initiatives, etc.

-ACE has so many pieces-we hope to find a coherent navigational “theme” that brings it all together.

What will help your office get things done more efficiently? How can a new website help your workflow?

-Easier and more flexible content creation, editing, photo/graphic use.

-Better forms (for nominations, community service sign-ups, etc.).

-Better way to archive/view old pages and photographs.

What type of interactivity would you use? What can help your office communicate more effectively?

-A calendar feed that we have on our website with ACE-related events that also automatically feeds into a larger campus-wide site-and have a way for RSVP to come to us plus have the event added to respondent’s Outlook calendar.  Also-a way to promote “outside” events as well via the calendar (e.g., an environmental rally in Burlington).

-A section that promotes professional development opportunities for faculty.

-An interactive calendar for faculty.

-Video (interviews with students and community partners, worksites in action, etc.).

-Video of faculty teaching community-connected courses; interviews with community partners involved in community-connected teaching, learning, and research.

-Opportunity for students, faculty, staff, and community partners to sign up for ACE e-newsletter.

-A way to enable students abroad to report on their service/internships/engagement there (but more formal than a blog, reviewed by ACE first).

-Link for recording volunteer hours (as part of student portal?).

-Online payment (e.g., for MAlt trips).

-How can we get alumni involved?

Do you have examples of functionality, design, or features from other colleges or industries that you like and admire?

-Sites of ACE-related offices (civic engagement, service learning, community service, citizenship, etc.) at Bowdoin http://www.bowdoin.edu/mckeen-center/index.shtml , Tufts http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/ , Amherst https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/cce , and Swarthmore http://www.swarthmore.edu/langcenter.xml .  Also:  Georgetown, Macalaster, Princeton, Carleton, Bryn Mawr, and Colgate.

-We really want to have the capability to create “photo slideshows” on a regular basis-the type of slideshow where the picture changes automatically every few seconds. Here is an example of what we like: http://www.colgate.edu/DesktopDefault1.aspx?tabid=1870. Here is an example of what we don’t want: http://www.middlebury.edu/admissions/gallery/?galleryImage=0 because you have to click “next” each time.

If you currently create or edit pages on any of our web sites, what functionality is good? What could be improved?

-We like that we can create content (e.g., a new News and Events story) and add it immediately to the website without going through a lengthy or bureaucratic approval process.

-We would like it if there were a better system for the News and Events Feed archives… right now they just run down the right-sidebar in a long column.

-We would like ACE to be able to use both the left and right sidebars (if the new system has both sidebars). Right now we can only use our right side-bar although some offices use both sides.

-Web stats!  We need information on who visits the ACE page-and which section(s) are most visited.

-Less “homemade” looking-e.g., it’s so obvious when the home page looks great, but other pages look just cobbled together (not arguing for total conformity, just a conformity in overall graphic appeal).  More opportunity/options for choosing design emphasis (heads, etc.).

-More seamless and clarifying links to collaborating departments (e.g., CCAL).

-Better search is critical.

Art Department and Slide Museum

Dana Barrow, Visual Resources Assistant (443-5546)

I’m working with Monica McCabe on the art history and studio art sites:

Monica McCabe, Academic Coordinator, History of Art/Studio Art (443-5234)

Websites I’m re-doing:

  • History of Art and Architecture department website
  • Studio Art department website
  • Visual Resources website

What we’d like to do:

  • Create a new graphic design that mixes art images and short blocks of text
  • Generate new content focused on the people and facilities in the art departments (example: faculty and student profiles), as well as informational content (example: courses and requirements, downloadable forms)
  • Create clear, new information architecture to organize our new content
  • Add photo galleries, video/audio clips, and social networking tools

Areas where I know I need help:

  • Creating video (example: short faculty and student interviews, images of student work, panoramic images of studio spaces)
  • Conceptualizing dynamic (i.e. effective, not necessarily flashy) was to present photo galleries
  • Conceptualizing  dynamic navigation

Ideas from Shel Sax that we’d like to follow up on:

  • A proposal for a winter term class for video making next January (2010) so we can create high quality video clips
  • Creating a space on our site where students (HARC and SA) can create portfolios.  (The model is teacher education.)  This might be a good place to use social networking tools.
  • Fostering some kind of convergence with Segue (examples: portal with access to online exams, course websites, and student portfolios)

General list of things we’d like to do/have (in no particular order):

Information about people in the department

  • Short profiles of faculty, visiting architects, students, and alumni (I will create list of people.)  Models are “My Midd Experience” and the short format of the bios in theater programs with accompanying photos.  Could involve short questions for faculty such as, What is your most recent accomplishment?
  • An online magazine for a more in-depth look at who is studying abroad, faculty research and projects, student projects, etc.  Model might be International Studies magazine (http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ump/majors/is/)
  • A feature where HARC faculty talk briefly about their favorite works in college art museum
  • Place where we can link to external info about faculty and students (example: College alumni magazine will be doing a feature on John Hunisak and we would like to link to this

Images

  • Images of our studio spaces (studio art and also architectural studies)
  • Photo galleries of student work
  • Photo galleries of faculty art work

Information

  • Info on courses and requirements (SA + HARC)
  • Info on planning your major, including study abroad (HARC – link this to student portfolios)
  • Downloadable forms (HARC – or make this part of student portfolios)
  • Put our department calendar online (HARC – maybe)
  • Special page on architecture and the environment (HARC)
  • Page about student work exhibitions (SA)
  • How-to info on VR site (could be in form of blog or wiki)

Technical Stuff

  • Support for Flash (studio art would like their site to be animated in some way, HARC doesn’t require this)
  • Ability for VR staff, academic coordinator, faculty, and students to add materials to various portions of the site
  • Ability to integrate images into site design (e.g. images of faculty and student art, images from museum collection)
  • A way to create student portfolios online (maybe use Segue)

Inspiring website we like:

  • Some of the pages on the Rhode Island School of Design website (http://www.risd.edu/undergraduate)
  • What we like about it: clear architecture, video, photo galleries, integration of art images into the design

History of Art and Architecture

Courses + Requirements

Faculty office hours

Students and alumni

Visiting the department

Resources (artstor, VR collection, museum)

Photos

Contact

Studio Art

Courses + Requirements

Faculty + Office Hours

News

Facilities

Study Abroad

Student Gallery

Visiting Artist Program

Contact

Sculpture in the form of a chair (photos)

Visual Resources Collection

Note: Made in CMS but links to pages made in another program

Collection Holdings

Stats on our facility and others’ facilities

Middlebury College Museum of Art

Stakeholder: Doug Perkins
Current: http://museum.middlebury.edu/
WebRedo Contact: Mike Roy

General: The Middlebury College Museum of Art is an AAM-accredited museum serving the students, faculty, and staff of Middlebury College as well as local and regional residents of and visitors to Addison County and the Champlain Valley. The museum preserves and displays the college’s permanent collection and offers 5-7 traveling loan exhibits each year to as many as 18,000-20,000 visitors. We serve as a visual resource for a broad spectrum of courses across the college’s curriculum, most notably the departments of History of Art and Architecture and Studio Art, though in any given year we are likely to work with courses in religion, languages, music, philosophy, anthropology, American studies, classical studies, English and American literature, environmental studies, theater, and teacher education. In addition, we welcome nearly 1,000 local K-12 school students to the museum each year through the Museum Assistants Program, a volunteer docent program that offers Middlebury College students a chance to learn about the museum and to lead tours. The museum also oversees and maintains a collection of 20 works of public art displayed around the Middlebury campus, and the museum director chairs the Committee on Art in Public Places.

Requirements:

Needs
* flexibility with respect to aesthetics and typography
* have a portion of the museum home page that shows the next several upcoming museum events
* ability to create email lists to allow patrons to subscribe to relevant lists
* offer RSS feeds for museum press release pages
* maintain the majority of the current site’s look
* participate in brand mapping exercises and discussions related to the college’s brand and sub brands
* online credit card membership form
* e-commerce capability for museum bookstore directly through museum site
* flash banners
* rotating home page image with a click through
* ability to allow people to control font size easily (for accessibility/readability) with one click
* alt text balloons that follow the cursor so that image captions are noticeable (e.g.
http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=fr_FR

* online forms for teacher workshop and school group registration

* video-taped lectures for podcasts and vodcasts linked to exhibits (e.g. Art in Public Places iPod tour)

* ability to link to press published electronically on the campus newspaper site as well as other news sites (Addison Independent, BFP, Seven Days, e.g.) and maybe have those stories pulled into a sidebar

* ability to zoom in on images as well as 360 degree image rotation

* online searchable database of the museum collection that is linked to the library’s online catalogue search function so that when students search for books or other media related to objects in the museum collection they will be alerted that the museum holds works that are relevant to their subject

Wants
* be involved in focus groups and usability as design process begins
* create a ‘museum module’ that users could choose to put on their customizable middlebury.edu home page that would allow pushing of info about exhibits, events, and other museum news to users’ customizable home page
* liquid layout, or at least a wider fixed width (950 pixels)
* enable comments on exhibit pages to allow visitors to leave their thoughts about exhibits and related events
* offer virtual audio and video tours either streaming through the site or for download
* allow museum Friends to RSVP on-line for members-only events
* distribute 8.5×11 .pdfs of posters (for printing and distributing at schools, etc.)
* high-quality videos of classroom discussions about art
* tagging
* facebook site (fans of the museum) to reach people through facebook
* ability to create online versions of exhibits with unique appearance (i.e. NOT within existing templates)
* updated design treatment for the Committee on Art in Public Places (CAPP) website that creates a visual link between CAPP and the museum

Nice-to-Haves

* allow students to create their own online exhibits from items in the museum collection (e.g. like what the pachyderm project might allow)