Author Archives: Michael Roy

Conversion Questions

We are at a point in the project where it is time to start thinking about the conversion process. To get that conversation started, here are a bunch of questions that we’ll need to answer (and no doubt there are many more.)

  1. How many pages are there on our present website?
  2. Will they all be converted, or will we weed some out?
  3. Once we’ve decided what will be converted, how much time do we think it will take to do all this?
  4. Who is going to do this work?
  5. Who is going to provide training and support?
  6. How much of the material can be converted to be driven by data in a database rather than maintained within the content management system?

Why now?

Given the financial turmoil within the College, the country, and the world, we’ve been asked by many people on campus: why are you doing this project now? Is this really the right time to be re-doing the website?

Here are some reasons why we think it is still the right time to do this:

  1. We have to change the underlying platform for our main website. Microsoft has declared that they  will no longer provide technical support, bug fixes, or security patches for content management system we license from them, and so we have no choice but to change to a different system.
  2. Our preference would be to choose an open-source system to manage our web, and while such a system is not free we do think the overall costs of an open-source system will be less than a commercial system. An open source system requires no purchase costs, and will have a broad-based support system of developers and users from around the world. The labor costs for designing and maintaining such a system are far less than comparable commercial systems like the Microsoft system we’ve been using, with no outlays for upgrades or bug fixes.
  3. As we enact attrition within the workforce through a hiring freeze, we will need to become ever more efficient in how we conduct business, provide services, communicate, share materials, etc. We think that an improved website can allow the various offices on campus work to work more efficiently, and will focus our efforts on achieving these sorts of goals.
  4. A more effective website will in turn reduce our reliance on print, which we think can save money in the long run and also help reduce our impact on the environment.

There are no doubt other reasons why moving forward on this project is a good idea for Middlebury in spite of the budget situation, allowing for better alumni, donor, and prospective student outreach, and further positioning Middlebury as a global and forward-thinking institution.

— mike roy

Update from Requirements Team

Here’s what’s new from the requirements team as of November 19th:

1. We’ve established who the stakeholders from the various offices, departments, and constituents should be, and contacted them to let them know that we’ll be calling on them to help us define the requirements for their area.

2. We are finalizing a campus-wide survey that we’ll be sending out shortly.

3. We will use the results from the survey to develop questions for focus groups that we’ll hold in early January.

4. We plan to hold a set of open sessions in December and January.

5. We’ve updated the website for the project to allow people to sign up to be in a focus group, take the survey (once it is complete!), requests features/functions, and make general comments.

6. We hope to have a first draft of our requirements document in place by the end of January.

–mike

Requirements Group Activities and Questions

1. Build awareness of project
How do we let the community know that we are looking for input/suggestions? How do we explain our process, goals, and inform people of their various opportunities for commenting, providing input, suggestions, etc.?

2. Draft a focus group protocol and methodology
What questions should we ask? Who will lead the focus group? Who will take notes? How do we recruit participants? When do we schedule them? How do we analyze the results?

3. Draft a survey
What questions should we ask? Who do we send it to? How do we analyze the results?

4. Organize open sessions for faculty, staff, and students
When? Where? Who to facilitate conversation? What questions do we ask? (How is this different than the focus group?) How to advertise?

5. Position statements from stakeholders
Develop a format/set of questions and invite stakeholders (academic departments, faculty, students, administrative offices) to develop position statements that allow them to articulate their goals for the web, and to sketch out scenarios for how various communities might interact with their office, and each other, through the website.

6. Statistics and inventory of existing environment
What do we know about present usage patterns? What key tools, services, utilities need to be converted to whatever we move towards?

7. What else should we be doing to gather feedback and ideas from the Middlebury community?

Questions we might ask (for use in our surveys, focus groups, open sessions, one-on-one conversations, etc.)

(These are the questions proposed by the Internet Strategy Taskforce; what other questions ought we ask? How might we re-write these questions? What questions might we exclude?)

  1. What impact does our web presence have on you and your role at Middlebury?
  2. What would you change if you were given free reign over our web presence?
  3. What would be the impact of keeping with the status quo for our web presence?
  4. What three opportunities might the web help you take advantage of that you are not currently utilizing?
  5. What three problems do you hear most often about our web presence?
  6. What emerging trends (technology related or not) will have the most impact on your work moving forward?
  7. What do you feel we must do in order to stay relevant/fresh as an institution?
  8. What web sites do you visit/use most often and why? Are there aspects of those sites that you think could be incorporated into Middlebury’s presence?

Groups that we will need to consult

Academic Departments  (All)
Admissions
Athletics
Bread Loaf School of English (including remote sites)
Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
Center for the Arts/Museum
College Advancement (APP)
Communications
CSO
Environmental Council
Faculty Council
Human Resources
LIS
Middlebury College Alumni Association
Middlebury Language Schools
Monterey Institute for International Studies
President’s Staff
Project on Innovation, Creativity and Leadership
Schools Abroad
SGA / Student organizations
Spring Student Research Symposium
Staff Council
Strategic Communications Committee of the Board

Who else?