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