Tag Archives: banner

Center for Teaching and Learning Resources

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

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).