Author Archives: Ryan Kellett

Sponsored Research Office

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Jim Ralph, Dean of Faculty Development and Research

Franci Farnsworth, Coordinator of Sponsored Research

Alison Darrow, Science Grants and Writing Facilitator

Our website serves several constituents:

  • the Controller’s office: we host their grant-related policies and information
  • faculty seeking grants: we supply tips, data, institutional policies & guidelines, forms, etc. to help guide proposal writing and application
  • Advancement’s office of Corporate and Foundation Relations: we share some policies and procedures, which are hosted at our site
  • the Dean of Faculty Development and Research: our site announces faculty grants and annual reports of grants awarded, a key way to celebrate faculty successes

We are a two-person office that reports to the DFDR; both of us maintain and update the site. Out offices are spread throughout campus (the Library, Bi Hall, Old Chapel), so sharing information electronically is crucial. The current site is an artifact of dumping old paper-based documents online in order to have at least some web resource and then not having the time to update or redesign. As a result, the site doesn’t invite active engagement and participation and is static and text-heavy. Faculty currently underuse our site, probably because it’s easier to just call us than it is to find and use information at our site. Revision and redesign is now ongoing, but a lot of what we do is still email-driven.

What we hope for from a new site:

  • an easier and more intuitive way to add linked pages, to help break up long blocks of text a way to add pop-ups, drop-down menus, etc., to keep users from having to navigate to other pages for short bits of supporting or related information
  • an easier way to “hide” and control access to sensitive and confidential content
  • ability to assign levels of access for stuff the office shares: currently we use Google docs for our department “whiteboard”
  • access for many users (including faculty and student workers) to edit the site and notify us easily so we can approve content before publishing it
  • dynamic linking to other departments’ information, through Banner and other means, so that redundant updates aren’t necessary
  • a platform-neutral system
  • ability to edit the site remotely

Features that would improve efficiency and help our workflow:

  • customized user profiles
  • a shared calendar
  • an anual grants-deadline calendar with a way to let faculty subscribe to alerts and reminders (currently we have to spam them)
  • a way to let faculty notify us that they plan to apply for specific grants
  • ability to dynamically link to and from faculty CVs and other content required for proposal writing (Institutional Research data especially; links with the library’s thesis archive; central database for faculty publications/achievements; faculty pages; career-path info for science alums, etc.)

Types of interactivity that would help our office communicate more effectively:

  • drop-down menus and pop-up windows so we don’t need to link to new pages – would flatten and simplify navigation considerably
  • an index of terms & acronyms (offices, agencies, etc)
  • dynamic timelines, checklists, and other forms that could be filled out online
  • calculators, worksheets, spreadsheets with College and funding rates and percentages built in
  • dynamic comments (e.g., user-contribute FAQ)
  • feeds of sponsored & relevant events, such as guideline updates, workshops
    & seminars
  • integrated links to Banner information
  • dynamic link updating, so that if material shared with another department is moved, the link on our page still works (or we’re notified to fix it)

Examples of functionality, design, and features from other colleges or industries that we like and admire:

  • Google docs: clean, simple, fast, super-easy to use and share
  • Google calendar: ditto
  • Boston University: clean, uncluttered design, yet there’s a lot going on; really like the tabbed navigation on the Home page and the way each tab slides aside to launch a video, interactive map, etc. (and that user has the option to interact or not).
  • The Daily Beast: the Cheat Sheet is a great feature

Current functionality of the Middlebury site and CMS:

    Editing is OK but clunky and subject to unexpected results; especially formatting carrying over when you cut & paste. It would be helpful to be able to see formatting tags (toggle on and off) so we could find and fix weirdness. Currently sometimes have to delete and redo because we can’t figure out how to fix the formatting.
    When Save refreshes the screen, it puts you at the top of the page: very annoying to have to scroll back down! Would be easier if it refreshed to where you left off.
    Hyperlink Mgr is great, very easy to use. Same with uploading documents.
    Really hate the way the right sidebar either doesn’t reflect the page titles or creates redundancy – not certain what creates this problem – editing page titles after they’re created? If so, the sidebar should reflect any changes to the page titles dynamically. Right now, we’re not even sure the sidebar can be changed, once created.
    More flexibility with fonts and text size would be nice.

Academic Affairs

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General:

  • Many in our office use the AA website for disseminating forms, and providing general information, but we fear that many on campus are not aware of what is there
  • Many use Banner and/or webmail but these are not easy to get to without several clicks.
  • We also use the schedule of courses to see when faculty are teaching, and reference the College Handbook online quite a bit
  • We also use the scheduler on RS25, however it is not the “complete” campus schedule as several offices do not use it to list their events.  We generally like the ability to request space from the site itself.
  • Although our experience has been less than positive with CMS, one thing that it does is allow you to set a date for a page to expire, which is very helpful
  • the college’s search engine is not ideal as it is difficult to find pages
  • a related issue is the length of pages, esp. in the handbook.  It’s difficult to point someone to a particular place when it may be half-way down the page, or someplace in the page that may be difficult to direct someone to.

Goals:

  • having more freedom to connect to pages outside of our area would be great, such as links to faculty pages or more connectivity to registrar or advising info
  • ability to disseminate information more easily (perhaps by avoiding email), such as upcoming talks, lectures, meetings, or reminders of deadlines, etc.
  • it would be ideal to know when faculty are teaching, which we do now by hunting through class schedules.  I like Amherst’s schedule tool, where you can add your own
  • It would be nice to have a collection of faculty accomplishments available on the AA website.  Right now we send out an email with that info on a semi-regular basis
  • Allowing folks to tailor their page to select their own “widgets” sounds like a good thing
  • How about links to local sites, like weather, CNN, the Chronicle, etc?
  • Please make sure we leave our address on the front page.  This is a real issue for me when looking at other school’s websites, which I do frequently
  • Could we add a virtual campus tour?
  • Would like to have a list of grants that have been approved so faculty can check on the status of their request when they log in
  • We would like an area for all relevant forms separate from informational sections.
  • it would be helpful if links within a site were listed alphabetically
  • AA should have a section that provides a “division of duties” chart for all staff in the office that can be referenced by others
  • Some sections of the site seem to be a “dumping area” for lots of stuff that makes it difficult to cull through. For example, a separate section for course proposal forms, student independent project proposals and guidelines
  • improve the search feature

College Advancement

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Stakeholder: Mike Schoenfeld

Liaisons: Maggie Paine and Joe Antonioli

Stakeholders interviewed: two in-depth discussions were held with representatives from all CA departments. In addition, each department provided written feedback on requirements.

Overview

College Advancement requirements focus on:

  • integration of the many sites it relies on;
  • personalized pages;
  • improvements to online giving and registration;
  • improved data collection;
  • repurposing of content/ability to pull content (video, stories, slideshows, blogs, etc.) into their department web pages,
  • tracking and analysis of online communications;
  • sharing of documents and information within work groups;
  • creation of a microphilanthropy site.

Integration of all CA-related sites

College Advancement needs the various sites that cater to alumni, parents, and friends to be seamlessly integrated and easy to access. Currently, they are not easy to find, it is difficult to move from one to another, and each one has a different look and feel.

These sites are: College Advancement (ie. Give to Middlebury) and Alumni and Parent Programs pages on the cms, Middlebury Initiative, microphilanthropy site (to be developed), online giving form, PantherNet (Harris Connect online community; includes MiddNet career network), Middlebury Online, Agents in Action and Initiative Volunteer Leadership site (volunteer management tools), Google APP events calendar, and University Channel, as well as Facebook pages, LinkedIn site, YouTube, and other social networking tools. In addition, there are affinity group pages developed by alumni, students, or faculty that need to be incorporated into or easily accessible from the CA site. (Examples include the D8 Web site and Digital Bridges site). (Please see appendix for complete list of non-CMS pages that College Advancement relies on.)

PantherNet-the Harris Connect online community-is currently being developed and will launch in May. Alumni and Parent Programs will use PantherNet for many services, and it’s critical that these services are integrated with the Middlebury site. The services include:

  • Event registration tied to a searchable calendar of events
  • Broadcast e-mail tool with tracking capabilities
  • Constituent directory with search tool and easy update process
  • Classifieds
  • Career networking tools including interface with LinkedIn and MiddNet, job postings, and online resources

Harris also has the option for alumni to create personalized pages; however, CA is interested in being part of the overall Middlebury customization project. (See below.)

Personalized/Customizable Pages

College Advancement needs to have customizable pages for its alumni, parents, and volunteers. In addition to providing options for alumni to customize their own pages, CA would like to be able to pull specific content into alumni pages, perhaps through a combination of previews of blogs, e-mails, news feeds, videos, etc., and links.

Some of the content could be determined by an individual’s Banner record. For example, if an alumnus was celebrating a reunion, information specific to that reunion would automatically be pulled into his page. Similarly, if an alumna were a class agent, Initiative leadership volunteer, or Cane Society representative, specific links and tools would be included on her page. Donors could see their giving history.

Other content that might be pulled into a person’s page includes events, important college news, such as a communication from the president, notification that the latest donor honor roll was online, Initiative updates, Annual Fund progress reports (with overall and class participation), and stories relating to a person’s interests as shown in Banner (athletics, D8, etc.).

College Advancement would like to see customized pages/portals for volunteers and stewardship reports for individuals accessible after log in.

There is interest in having one log-on that would provide people with access to Middlebury personal pages, donor honor roll, online community, and their pages on multiple social networks. (particularly for younger alumni). At the least, once logged into any Middlebury site, there would be no need for log in to another Middlebury site.

In addition, CA would like to see personalized Web pages for staff members, with features such as calendar, project team discussion groups, and rss feeds.

Online Giving and Registration

Online giving and registration need to be more fully automated and connected to Banner and the Harris online community. Online giving also needs to be easier for donors to use and to provide more giving options.

Currently, TouchNet does not interface with Banner. Instead, each gift and registration requires a journal entry to be done. Then gift processing and alumni staff members enter gifts and registration information manually into each person’s Banner record. Recording registration information on the web site is also a manual process.

College Advancement would like to see the following improvements to these systems:

  • Enable Touchnet to interface with the logic that is already written into Banner Self Service.
  • Automatic processing and entry of registrations and gifts into Banner with a screen that allows each gift and registration to be reviewed by a staff member, then accepted. This would also include automatic entry into Banner of updated personal information that is generated when people register for an event or make a gift; again, this data would need to be reviewed before being fed into Banner.
  • Event registration forms that require people to include their e-mail addresses and other personal information.
  • Event registration forms that also allow people to make a gift and have both automatically processed (see above).
  • Registration and gift information automatically displayed on appropriate college pages. For example, when someone registers for reunion, his/her name would automatically appear in the list of who’s coming on the class reunion page; as gifts came in, the “mercury” in a thermometer tracking giving would go up.
  • Automatic processing of recurring credit card gifts or pledge payments (currently done manually and credit card information must be kept on file)
  • Once a person logs into the system (either the online giving form, online community, or personal Middlebury page), when he/she goes to make a gift the personal information we have for them in Banner is automatically displayed.
  • Elimination of need for storage of personal security information (credit card data) on College servers.

Online giving could be made easier and more effective in the following ways:

  • Enable memorial gifts and gifts in honor of others
  • Flag missing information in the online giving form as people are filling it out
  • Include a printable form for multi-year pledges as part of giving form
  • Enable automatic withdrawal from donors’ bank accounts on a monthly basis
  • Allow donors to request information about gift planning, reunion giving, etc. using the online giving form
  • Provide a feature that recognizes what someone is giving to and suggests other options (like Amazon)
  • Provide option for links to videos that demonstrate impact of giving in particular areas
  • Customized online giving forms for different areas of the College (BLSE, LS, etc.) or specific fundraising projects (Organic Garden, etc.)

Improved Data Collection

Updated information on constituents is key to being able to communicate effectively. College Advancement needs to collect e-mail addresses and other information about alumni and parents. The changes noted above, will help. They are interested in other methods of collecting this data that we might suggest.

Repurposing Content

College Advancement needs to able to pull and display content aggregated in Middlebury Online, “below the fold,” or available elsewhere on the Middlebury.edu site (campus blogs, discussion groups, news, stories, lectures, video, slideshows, The Campus, WRMC, etc.) into individual CA pages, where having such content would reinforce key messages and help advancement tell the Middlebury story to its audiences.

Tracking and analysis of online communications

College Advancement needs the ability to track and analyze its online communications. It may be that training in using Google Analytics, Lyris, and the Harris Connect broadcast e-mail tool tracking function will fulfill this need.

Sharing of documents and information within work groups

An easy, searchable system for sharing documents and information-perhaps also including as video, slideshows, photos, etc.-is needed to replace the static N drive, where advancement officers currently store and share information. This must be accessible from off-campus. Having the ability for multiple people to work on a document at once (like Google docs) would also be useful.

Microphilanthropy Web site

College Advancement is charged with developing a site that combines concepts from microfinance and social networking and that enables donors to fund specific projects that are meaningful to them and to connect with others who share their interests.

Other Needs

  • Graduate programs easily accessible via the home page.
  • Discussion groups in each of the languages we teach
  • Interactive thermometer that tracks alumni participation
  • Amazon-type feature that remembers visitors’ preferences
  • Obvious way to provide feedback or comment
  • Ease of site navigation
  • Meeting organizer that makes it easy to schedule meetings involving many people
  • Donor site accessible after log-in that includes donor honor roll, 1800 Society and True Blue Society pages, and other stewardship content.
  • Interactive map or other feature that would enable alumni and college communications to post a photo and a brief story or statement. Then each person/location would be added to the map and when you clicked on it, you would see the photo and quote. Map would also have locations of all our schools abroad and Bread Loaf sites with information on each one. An alternative way to show this would be to rotate photos/quotes on the map. MSNBC did something similar, but without the map. Roll over a particular photo of a person and you get a brief quote. Click on the full story and it delivers the story in a pop-up screen. See www.msnbc.com/id/26903309

Language Schools

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Form of contact: Meeting with Coordinators and Senior Staff

Stakeholder: Jamie Northrup

WebRedo Contact: Jamie Northrup

Website: http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ls/

Requirements:

  • Embedded video
  • easy blogging tools
  • in-language functionality/ability to display other languages
  • photo galleries that students/staff can upload to
  • live-chat capabilities
  • customizable home pages
  • single sign-on (so once you log on you do not have to log on to different tools)
  • links to facebook and other social networking tools
  • distinction between on-campus/off-campus sites
  • application tracking
  • ability to upload and edit forms
  • flash features- have a map that displays where students/faculty come from

Schools Abroad

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Form of contact: Meeting with Coordinators and Senior Staff

Stakeholder: Liz Ross and Jeff Cason

WebRedo Contact: Jamie Northrup

Website: http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/sa

Brief:

Requirements:

  • Easier navigation- drop downs
  • some interactive features like discussion/blog/wiki
  • a ‘discussion’ where students can post, but the postings are only viewed by administrator.
  • We currently have on-line application for non-Midd students applying to Schools Abroad.  It will be very help for advisors/faculty to be able to submit references electronically as well; currently they can just download a PDF and then send it to us.
  • Possibly create a system so that study abroad advisors at other institutions can track students’ applications to see what stage in the process they are in.
  • Being able to send emails to batches of students (Midd/NonMidd/Term Abroad would be handy, though we can access this info now with FMP, or Excel sheets for those of us who keep Banner records in Excel
  • Ability to upload and maintain forms on the www site
  • Option for text-only loading; useful for students abroad in minimal connection environments (e.g. Russia)
  • Directory – improvement would be to search the directory/website directly from the homepage rather than having to click on the link to the directory page.   Also it’s good that there is a drop-down menu for departments, but “student” would be a choice.  And now that it’s been upgraded, the results are shown below (on my screen/browser) the search screen, so you have to scroll to see the results, when really, once I’ve search, that part of the screen could go away.
  • Segue: the text formatting is terrible (it reformats however it likes and doesn’t allow you to change the formatting once on the interface).  This means that unless you’re typing everything from scratch on Segue, the formatting is screwy.  Also, the “son of segue” version, which lacks the quiz function, makes it less useful.
  • Event registration: I like the automatic reply that tells you your event has been submitted successfully, and I like the on-line calendar/room availability feature-it saves a lot of back and forth. On-line forms, such as Events Scheduling, is useful and works well.
  • Student Worker job posting: VERY easy to use-I wouldn’t change a thing, but there has got to be a way to electronically submit a student payroll authorization form.
  • KeySurvey-This seems to be working well, now that we have a departmental account and can steal from one another’s surveys.  The inability to run a report by respondent and hide the email (making them cease to be anonymous) can be problematic.
  • CMS.  I especially like the ability to “replace” old documents.  It’s recently been proven problematic when we link to a server (on-line application, for example) without the “go” url-and then the server we’ve linked to is off-line.  It’s difficult to know what he “go” addresses are and when to use them if we haven’t created them.  The other problems I have are the bulleted lists (if you remove a bulleted list, I can never get that final bullet to delete) and the multiple pastings of text (instead of inserting a new paragraph, often it will insert it twice-and you can’t always just go in and delete the second one).  Much better in this version than the past is the ability to change the size of an existing table and align pictures/wrap text. It would be nice if the Resource Manager saved resources in either alphabetical or chronological order…some type of searchable order (any order really) would be nice rather than the apparent randomization it uses now.
  • Being able to submit grades online (Blackboard has this functionality)