Tag Archives: R25

Academic Affairs

Leave a reply

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

Academic Departments

6 Replies

Heard from Susan Campbell, Department Chairs, Academic Coordinators
Drafted by Renée Brown and Jason Mittell

In surveying department chairs and coordinators, as well as casual discussions with many faculty, frustrations with our current web design and system run deep. Key problems mentioned include lack of design flexibility, difficulty in updating, poor navigation and organization, inability to easily embed images and media, and the static nature of information and site design. There was widespread enthusiasm for the makeover and willingness to participate in the process. Given that every academic department has different needs and specific uses, it is difficult to assess the relative importance of various features, but this document attempts to synthesize key needs and requirements as expressed across the curriculum.

Needs for Departmental Sites

We have identified a number of types of information that departments feel are important to their sites, broken into four major areas:

  • Department Overview: brief mission statement, central contact info, feed of news/events, and visual vibrancy for splash page
  • People: lists of faculty & staff with links to detailed profile pages, office hours & contact info, updates of publications/grants/achievements, alumni & student profiles
  • Curriculum: major requirements (including potential concentrations & sample sequences for more complex programs like ENVS and AMST), independent project guidelines, downloadable forms (both departmental and from the registrar), courses/schedule, links to class websites
  • Resources: departmental library guide, career info, study abroad recommendations, departmental newsletter, facilities & equipment overviews/policies, external links (research sites, grad programs, opportunities for community outreach, etc.), guide to “what can be done with a XXX major?”, feeds from external blogs, video/images of specialized facilities

Many departments indicate that they currently underuse their websites, with minimal information that is rarely updated. There was consensus that this makeover process could help show people some new ways to use the web effectively. During sessions where other websites were demoed, there were frequent “a-has” upon seeing capabilities that other schools are using, so we feel there will be enthusiasm for innovation. Some specific innovations that seemed particularly popular include dynamically generating course listings (a “modular catalog”), faculty pages feeding & linking to schedules and courses, feeds of sponsored & relevant events, and integrated links to Banner information.

We discussed the option of choosing among a group of templates, customized for both visual variety and optimized for different needs (such as more graphics/media, more text-based, etc.) – most coordinators and faculty seem to embrace this option. Coordinators wanted more flexibility with fonts and sizing of text. There was a clear desire for more graphic and media capabilities, especially within the Arts.

Some faculty embraced the idea of student and/or alumni work being profiled and displayed on the site, especially in the Arts. Potential links with the library’s thesis archive is an option worth considering.

Some departments currently publish newsletters, and many would consider publishing them to the web instead of, or in addition to, paper and mailing. Ongoing updated departmental blogs were of interest to a few departments as well.

Needs for Individual Faculty

Faculty pages were noted for being rarely updated, dry, and lacking variability or personality. Faculty were interested in being able to edit their own profile, recognizing that some faculty would be less likely to do so (although no less likely than emailing the updates to coordinators, which could still be an option). Arts faculty specifically want the ability to host images and media of their creative work.

An idea discussed with coordinators was to have a central database for faculty publications/achievements – either faculty or coordinators would enter the information about a new publication (including link to online version or Midd subscription through JSTOR, etc.), which would then feed to the faculty’s homepage, their department(s) page, a college-wide faculty achievement page (which would be useful for library acquisitions as well as PR), and into the annual report for faculty given to the Provost. Coordinators thought this would be a better option than updating individual faculty pages, and expected between 1/3 and 1/2 faculty would enter their own info, growing over time with increased technological fluency.

The idea of automatically feeding a faculty’s scheduled teaching with links to courses to their profile page (as on Amherst) was quite popular. It’s uncertain how many faculty would maintain separate pages through Segue or the community.middlebury.edu server if the core website were more flexible – one option would be to embed separately designed pages into the core departmental site.

Workflow

The current CMS restricts editing to coordinators, although some faculty have edited on the platform. A number of chairs expressed interest in editing their pages, having other faculty edit, or having student workers edit. Coordinators generally want to be involved in the editing process, both to oversee consistency and maintain their web skills, but recognize that the current workflow leads to infrequent updates and little input from faculty.

An easy-to-use editing and authoring system, especially for incorporating media and images, was seen as essential, with the ability to increase participation of faculty in the editing process. One issue expressed by some faculty was that the new system not be tied to a specific browser or platform (e.g. must be usable on Mac/PC and Firefox/IE).

Coordinators were concerned that expanded content on the department site would lead to increased workload. Sharing editing responsibilities would help. Additionally, the ability of sites to be dynamically assembled, rather than static updates, would be useful – for instance, feeding events, faculty publications, career links, library research tools, and alumni news from other offices and systems would make the site update regularly without requiring manual changes.

In imagining the workflow model that would work best for academic departments, coordinators endorsed a system where many users could be given editing ability for the department page (including faculty and student workers), but that all edits must be approved by the coordinator before publishing (via a notification system). This should increase updates from faculty on the content they know best, and allow delegation and distribution of work more effectively, without sacrificing consistency and appropriate form & use of media. Some thought it would be helpful to be able to turn the approval requirement on and off, allowing the possibility of all authorized editors to publish directly.

The idea of a student/alumni section of the site that could be updated (with approval) by students and alumni themselves was mentioned as a way to encourage participation. Another option is a simple webform for alums to send in info to feed into the site, perhaps at the college-wide level with tags to majors and field of employment.

Other Desired Features

  • Many coordinators were enthusiastic about being able to easily customize their own user profiles to make their web use more efficient – after a clear explanation, all coordinators present at the meeting said they’d definitely use this feature.
  • One consistent theme with coordinators and faculty was that as much Banner information as possible should be accessible from the website directly without using BannerWeb. Course rosters (linked from course pages, as on Amherst), student schedules, faculty schedules, lists of majors, and the like should be accessed via links rather than BannerWeb login.
  • More sophisticated use of feeds and targeted info via the web was endorsed, especially as an alternative to email-driven communication.
  • One idea would be to have lists of new library acquisitions in a certain discipline feed into the departmental site.
  • Better management of events and calendar info was mentioned, both in terms of flexible feeds by tag, department, location, medium (lecture, performance, film), and the ability to click “Add to my Calendar” to export to Outlook or other systems.
  • Some language departments mentioned the need for varying language character sets (such as Cyrillic and Greek).
  • Some arts departments want the ability for students to create their own portfolios of their work, as Teacher Ed currently does. This would ideally be embedded directly into the core department site, not externally hosted on Segue.
  • A few faculty expressed interest in having the ability for social networking, and a couple said they have used Facebook pages to coordinate with current majors and alums.
  • A few mentioned the use of wikis, but only for specific purposes (for instance, a wiki for documentation of FMMC equipment).
  • Some suggested a “majors-only” area, although there was not a clear sense of what information and material should have restricted access.
  • One coordinator suggested that departments could have a list of current majors on the site, potentially with links to student pages/profiles.
  • One coordinator suggested the possibility of online sign-up for scheduling of meetings and appointments. Another suggested the use of an online order form for equipment requests (currently used on CHEM site), which might also be expanded to request access to facilities (like MUSIC practice rooms), reserve specialized equipment (like FMMC cameras).
  • A few faculty expressed interest in having the departmental website offer the possibility for discussion and community involvement, not just a one-way flow of information. Options include blog-like updates with comments, an open “wall” to make announcements/promotions, and a department wiki open to Midd users as a workspace for engaging with the department.

Events and Scheduling Office

Leave a reply

Stakeholder: Lisa Ayers
Current: http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/schedule/
WebRedo Contact: Ryan Kellett

General: Events Scheduling and Information Office has the goal of integrating the scheduling and sharing events information with the Middlebury College campus. It serves as the Functional Administrator of Resource 25 (fully hosted by Midd) for facilities and events scheduling management, maintains the “Events at Middlebury” website (http://cat.middlebury.edu/events/ ), and produces the table tent dining hall calendars.  The Master Location Schedule (http://r25web.middlebury.edu/wv3midd/wv3_servlet/urd/run/wv_space.DayList) is a component of Resource 25, also maintained by the Events Scheduling Office.  The Guide to Academic Facilities website (http://cat.middlebury.edu/events/facilities/) maintained by LIS, is linked to Resource 25 and is utilitized extensively by the campus community.  The work flow for scheduling is managed through a series of online forms, recently upgraded using sites.middlebury.edu and soon to be shared with the campus.

Goals:
  • Resource 25: Keep CollegeNET’s R25 in increased capacity. CollegeNET’s goal is to be 100% web based by 2011.  A component of the current version of R25, Webservices, has not yet been implemented.  Webservices will be necessary to advance our use of R25.  25Live is a recent release from CollegeNET and will allow for many of the advancements that are desired for Events at Middlebury (http://corp.collegenet.com/depts/higher_ed/series/25Live/ ). Using a vendor with the technical support offered by this option allows for a reduction in support required from Middlebury’s web management staff and sustainability when there is Middlebury staff turnover.
  • One Stop Shop: R25 must be deployed in such a way that every dept, office, and stakeholder buys-into it its use as the universal scheduler. Currently, too many redundant efforts are made to recreate calendars separate from R25. This contributes to errors and inaccuarcies in event information and prohibits communication when late changes are made that require notification (change of time, location, cancellations, etc.)
  • Event Marketing and Campus Announcements: The Events at Middlebury site should be enhanced to serve as a tool for distribution of College Announcements, highlighting key events information and bring comfort to events planners that their events are being advertised in such a way as to change behaviors and reduce or eliminate the needs for All Campus emails for this purpose.
  • Event Feed: Users should be able to use event feeds for whatever purpose they choose. RSS and iCal support are highly encouraged such that users do not have to use Outlook. Feeds can also be placed on CMS pages and pulled into individual portals. Departments should be able to to pull information from R25 for their department sites as needed to facilitate a one entry point calendaring process.  This would allow for accuracy and consistency of information while enabling an appearance of a specialized calendar for those departments who desire a calendar presented on their web site.  Events information should be able to be shared with users in such a way as to allow for attention to be brought to events of each users’ interest as opposed to them having to weed through a long list to find their interests.   All of these tools should be supported in such a way as to advance in concert with technology changes to continue to bring value to the students and departments and reduce the possibilities of underground calendars being developed because Middlebury’s no longer serves the needs of the changing population and the technical advances.
  • Facilities View: Easy and fast CMS updates to view spaces on campus. Also, need for multimedia presentation of spaces (photos, videos, and configurations of tables/chairs) and the support to keep this information current. Also dynamic listing of room features (smart classrooms, technologies that is clearly understood by the lay person considering space options prior to reserving a room).
  • Master Location Schedule: Continue to offer to the campus
  • Events at Middlebury: Major redesign for ease-of-use with multiple views (month, week, day). Need to preserve sortability by categories and depts. Equal representation of events (“objectivity”) such that no event is advertised better than another.
  • External Events calendaring:  Enable a separate calendar that allows for marketing of off site events (such as those planned by College Advancement, Admissions, etc.)
  • Multimedia: ability to pair pictures or other media with an event so that it can be marketed with that media. It is more attractive on Events at Middlebury website. Must be user-uploaded pictures.
  • Payment system: allow for a built-in payment system to register and pay for events. Some box office functionality.
  • Event Alerts: opt-in/opt-out alert system (email? or message to portal?) for event changes and cancellations
  • Broadcasting: Broadcast “Today’s Events & Today’s Announcements” visually at other places on campus at physical locations (grille, library, dining halls). And/or one daily email announcement with direct feed from R25.
  • Security/Privacy: segment views of events for faculty, staff, students, other. Protect certain events from being over-attended.
  • Monterey: Enable these features to be used by Monterey as they are already sharing R25