Tag Archives: search

Center for Teaching and Learning Resources

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Stakeholder: Susan Campbell and Kathy Skubowski

Website: http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/ctlr/

WebRedo Contact: Renee Brown

General:

  • We regularly use Banner, library, blog for writing tutors, servers, Outlook, and Entourage. Would like to be able to share documents, photos, video, blogs, email, RSS feeds
  • Search/navigation: lack of consolidation. Would like a way to centralize material or link from one location–even if you’re good at finding information, it shouldn’t be difficult to do.
  • There seem to be lengthy delays and lack of timely response to requests for new channels and the possibility of a bottleneck in authorizing and approving requests for new or more web content.
  • The ability to look at the Master Schedule without having to go through someone else is very valuable.
  • Our course management tool is not easy to find on the College web site.

Goals:

  • Would like to offer short questions and self-paced tests to students as part of the tutoring program but there is no easy way to do this despite the fact that other institutions have this facility. In Math, there are symbol/equation issues, but nonetheless, we should have a built in online testing capability.  Emphasized the desirability of being to work with such a tool without any intermediation by tech folks.
  • Noted the lengthy delays and lack of timely response to requests for new channels, etc.  Also mentioned the possibility of a bottleneck in authorizing and approving requests for new or more web content.
  • The possibility of integrating AccuTrack more into Banner.
  • Having a web designer help with setting up the original structure and organization would be helpful.
  • If there was tracking program that the web admins could run to see where the hits to a particular department are going, it would facilitate the organization of the site. The general sense is that students have difficulty finding information and without information about how people are navigating the CTLR site, it is difficult to know how to improve the organization of information.
  • When on a site, having drop down menus are a comfort, providing glimpses as to the result of clicking on a link and a sense of how the site is organized. Also, shows a variety of options.
  • Hamilton’s teaching/learning site (http://www.hamilton.edu/writing/index.html) is very well laid out. Was searching for oral presentation skills and had no problem logically navigating.
  • Like the idea of having a customized home page, that is optional, but would be most helpful to permit a unique home base for each user.

Registrar’s Office

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Stakeholder: Susan Campbell

Registrar Website: http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/records

WebRedo Contact: Renee Brown

General:

It’s important that it’s easy for us to update our departmental website (CMS).  The current method works but is rather cumbersome.

The master calendar is a very valuable tool.

Maintaining and/or improving the search functionality will be very important.  Since users have to drill down deep in our current website (pages buried 5 and 6 levels deep) the search function is especially valuable.  We need the website to be easy to navigate for our constituents

(faculty, alums, current students, parents, etc).

Format-wise, a home page that occupies all of the space in the window (not framed in white, or centered) is more visually appealing.  Our current page is flanked in blue space, whereas Harvard’s homepage content spans the width of the entire window.  Some web pages navigate directly to the proper page when you type it in the search engine.  See vassar.edu.  Also, larger font is a must!  Users often comment that the font size is too small.  We understand uniformity, but it would be great to have at least a headline font size as well as a text font size.

Goals:

We would like to be able to explore the possibility of increased functionality of the web to reach our constituents in new ways.  For example, creating a Q & A  first-year blog for registration questions, etc.  Or, an on-campus registration blog during web registration time as new ways to reach students.

It would be useful to employ the “hover” function on the home page with the large categories that allow users to link right away to an embedded page.  Many schools use this functionality well online.  For example, see williams.edu.

It would be very valuable to have a searchable, online database that archives course data (meeting schedules, course descriptions, etc).

Undergraduate Research Office (URO)

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URO Web Makeover Requirements Document

Pat Manley and Karen Guttentag (MS Costanza-Robinson, liaison)

Meeting quote: “We realized how little we knew about the possibilities”

The URO website currently incorporates text, photos, online submission of symposium abstracts, and a searchable database of research opportunities. These features need to remain and be improved in the Web Makeover. Importantly, the research/exploration opportunities included in the database includes those for which the main point of campus-contact spans several offices (ACE, CSO, URO, Rohatyn, Student Fellowships/Health Professions). Thus, web features that will enhance/automate the flow of content to URO from dispersed locations are particularly desirable (Portal?). Currently content updating and removal of old information is slow, because a single person, dedicates 10 hours/week total to the administrative assistance for URO and only a subset of that time can be dedicated to web upkeep.

Specific Desired Features:

  • A master calendar of deadlines for various research/exploration opportunities that self-populates with events/deadlines based on content housed elsewhere (e.g., within the URO searchable database, on ACE/CSO/etc. websites/databases) and can include manual inputs from dispersed sources. The calendar entry should be linked to other locations for more information about the opportunity. For example, if a faculty member gets notice of an EPA undergraduate fellowship, that faculty member could add that deadline to the calendar with an embedded link to the EPA website.

  • More web technology education/awareness/consulting. The current feeling is that web content providers/authors and people generally are left to request help with projects and/or specific web-based technologies. This situation presupposes that people know what web-based technologies are out there, what they can do, and that they desire them. They often don’t. As an example, LIS advertises training sessions for a variety of software and software tools (e.g., Excel pivot tables), but doesn’t advertise what pivot tables are useful for. URO suggests for LIS/communications to target specific audiences (perhaps divisionally) with announcements of training sessions/help/suggestions that focus on function rather than software/tool names/jargon. Another avenue would be to host a CAOS mtg dedicated to the subject of web-based technologies so coordinators can disseminate relevant info to their dept/programs. As an example here, Doodle is an easy effectively tool for planning group meetings, and no training is needed to use it, but most people simply don’t know what it is, that it exists, that it is free. Along these lines, URO has had considerable (and wonderful!) help from LIS setting up the searchable database, but the help was also offered in a way such that LIS helped URO do what URO requested. URO would have liked more consulting on what possibilities/limitations exist with regard to searchable databases, perhaps with examples of other databases currently in operation (e.g., at other institutions). Had they known about other/additional possibilities or existing limitations they may have chosen to do things differently. Finally, there are tools/software that people know about, but use infrequently enough to forget how to do it (e.g., printing a poster to a plotter). The existing LIS “how-to” guides are viewed as extremely helpful/well-done, but the feeling is that there are not enough of them and/or that they are difficult to find. This represents an larger discussion of what is reasonable to expect of LIS.

  • Both as more URO content becomes available and the makeover progresses, URO would like

    • to convert their static photo gallery into a slideshow that displays on their homepage, much like the main homepage

    • to add embedded video. Currently, great symposium video is posted online by Communications as part of a press release, but URO doesn’t know how/if they can do this on their site

    • to more fully automate and streamline the online symposium abstract submission/approval process. Currently, students submit their form supposedly with the consent/approval of their faculty mentor. URO would like the student-submitted abstract to automatically initiate an email that requests online approval of the named faculty mentor, while simultaneously logging/recording the submission as PENDING in the URO database – that way if the faculty mentor fails to approve in a timely manner, a mentor-reminder email can be auto-generated. Finally, after the faculty mentor approves the submission, the submission would be logged/recorded as MENTOR-APPROVED and await URO approval/scheduling. I suppose once a time/location for the submission is set, an automated email conveying that information to the student/mentor would be nice, too.

Center for the Arts (CFA)

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Stakeholder: Liza Sacheli Lloyd
WebRedo Contact: Joe A.

Center for the Arts requirements focus on:

  • Calendar and events services
  • Improved search functionality and navigation
  • A modern online/real time box office system
  • Customization
  • Social networking
  • Tagging

Right now, the Arts are one of the seven main areas at the op level of navigation off the home page. In the web makeover, we want to ensure that the Arts continue to be included as a top level of the College’s web presence. The Arts at Middlebury play a unique role as an area of the College in that the Arts are important to both a campus and community audience.  We’re a connector between students, faculty, staff, and community members.  We’re also a connector between academic disciplines, enrichment pursuits, and leisure interest.  Because the Arts are relevant to such a broad cross-section of the community, our outreach should be represented early on in the viewer’s experience with Midd on the web.

One of our biggest wishes for the future is that the Arts at Midd’s presence on the web can better reflect the vibrancy, the energy, the vitality of the programs and people here.  We’d like a web framework that allows more freedom, more excitement… we’d like to see sound and movement on the new site.  The ability to better incorporate audio and video would allow us to show what happens here more effectively. Obviously, artists are people who value free expression!

Calendar: An events calendar is, and will always be, a really important part of the Arts’ web presence. The Events at Middlebury area, and the way it interfaces with Resource 25, has always felt clunky and unfriendly.  We have an amazing amount of exciting stuff happening at Middlebury-there has got to be a way for the web to show that excitement in a way that’s easier to navigate and understand, that looks and sounds great too (pictures? sound?)  Maybe an events calendar could be more interactive, or have social networking compatibilities. What about a running marquee of events each day?

Search: Middlebury would benefit from a more effective/friendlier search functionality for the entire Midd web presence.

Navigation: There is great room for improvement in our web’s navigation strategy!  There is an opportunity to integrate different functions so that intuitive sequences of info unfold to the user.  For example, one of our faculty envied a school where it was easy to find each academic department, then once you located a particular faculty member, you could see what classes they were teaching, and that page linked right up to the relevant course catalog listings; that linked right to registration, etc.

Box Office: We would like to see Middlebury invest in new ticketing software that would run in real time, and be hooked up to exchange critical information with Banner. Right now we operate on a separate system, and we have work-arounds to make ticket sales available on the web (NOT in real time).  If we ever got this functionality, we could be of real service to the entire campus community as a commercial portal for all kinds of services.

Customization: We would like to see our web presence have customization capability so that the various places we go electronically every day could be collated into my Midd web experience.

Social networking: We have an opportunity to strengthen our sense of community at Middlebury with technology.  In the era of Facebook, there are so many new and different ways to keep in touch.  How can Midd take advantage of that connectivity?

Tagging: We have a program we call “Curricular Connections” where we suggest links between the course curriculums each semester and the public arts offerings that are planned.  Each semester the online Curricular Connections brochure is organized thematically, with chapters devoted to any theme that emerges during that timeframe.  There is a connection between this thematically organized content and the tagging feature.