Tag Archives: virtual tour

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

Breadloaf School of English (BLSE)

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Jan. 29, 2009

Attending:  Sanda Legault, Judy Jessup, Elaine Lathrop, Lexa DeCourval, Karen Browne, Susan Holcomb with Renee Brown and Shel Sax

One major complaint was the Middlebury branding, student profiles that are undergraduate focused which doesn’t work for Bread Loaf. – would like to have the ability to use BL appropriate content. Love the fact that BLSE is well-positioned on the College’s home page along with MIIS, Writers Conference, etc.

Unlike other groups on campus, BLSE has its own communication/conferencing/email program, Breadnet (First Class software) that it uses for communications, particularly during the summers when the 4 campuses are in session. During that time, many students don’t use the Middlebury College web page, since all available relevant information is accessible from Breadnet.

Types of information: very basic information is currently there but have talked about photos, something like a Facebook page that connects applicants to current students, etc.

  • overview at BLSE page – with who we are, what we do, faculty
  • information that we have is there but the CMS standards are too rigid and have prevented BLSE from changing content – so the original content was mostly straight from the catalog and that’s what’s still there – this summer, looking to have a media section where they can put podcasts – this is an idea for the reunion – also issues with permissions for a large scale podcast initiative
  • integration with Banner Web is critical, particularly for the online applications process.
  • online application is confusing to students – students from the Language Schools apply to BLSE, for example

Navigation/Search:

  • Want to make sure that the inquiry process is in place for admissions, so that online applications and forms work well from the current web page. – some students need assistance but typically because they don’t read the available online instructions
  • some things are very hard to find e.g. webcams, campus map, etc.
  • search function is not a big help but a site map would be a big help. – are there people to advise on the better way to structure the site and to do more creative and interesting things
  • people want to get to information with only a few clicks

Requested Features/Functionality

  • areas for growth including online newsletter, audio and video of presentations, plays, readings, etc.,
  • online community for alums and current students, BLTN for example
  • Single log on and customization of individual pages would be desirable
  • Unique factor about BLSE is the use of FirstClass (Breadnet) for communication and some document sharing. Otherwise, use Ocelot
  • Having a link to Breadnet would be useful
  • Forms, applications, etc. are typically Banner based or on Ocelot
  • Definitely want embedded photos, video, podcasting, etc.
  • visual map for the various campus, virtual tours of the 4 campuses
  • Want to have students submit and publish photos taken by BL’ers with some control.
  • Ability to create summer content that would be easy to turn on and turn off as the yearly cycle turns. How to communicate with students during the yearly cycle that permits the targeting of specific subsets of the BLSE community.
  • Want different types of information – some general for non-enrolled students, faculty, etc. and then have a log in for students, faculty and staff to access more individualized information.
  • Ability to ‘push’ information rather than publish information. – RSS feeds might be of use, but assumes that people use RSS feeds and it is not clear how to create such an environment
  • For example, want to let enrolled students in Vermont that theater tickets are available, but don’t want this information to go to BLSE students on other campuses.
  • want something to facilitate the publishing of images on the web, automating the optimization of the image size, etc.

Workflow – current & desired

  • Interested in having multiple editors with one or two ‘approvers’
  • would like a way to individualize the application forms for BLSE – and looking to put course registration online
  • Use pdf files, and forms that interact with Banner.
  • Note that students range in age from young to old and the older cohorts have difficulties navigating the web site and online forms – there’s lot of individualized assistance provided by the BLSE staff
  • lack of use of credit cards is an issue

Middlebury College Museum of Art

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Stakeholder: Doug Perkins
Current: http://museum.middlebury.edu/
WebRedo Contact: Mike Roy

General: The Middlebury College Museum of Art is an AAM-accredited museum serving the students, faculty, and staff of Middlebury College as well as local and regional residents of and visitors to Addison County and the Champlain Valley. The museum preserves and displays the college’s permanent collection and offers 5-7 traveling loan exhibits each year to as many as 18,000-20,000 visitors. We serve as a visual resource for a broad spectrum of courses across the college’s curriculum, most notably the departments of History of Art and Architecture and Studio Art, though in any given year we are likely to work with courses in religion, languages, music, philosophy, anthropology, American studies, classical studies, English and American literature, environmental studies, theater, and teacher education. In addition, we welcome nearly 1,000 local K-12 school students to the museum each year through the Museum Assistants Program, a volunteer docent program that offers Middlebury College students a chance to learn about the museum and to lead tours. The museum also oversees and maintains a collection of 20 works of public art displayed around the Middlebury campus, and the museum director chairs the Committee on Art in Public Places.

Requirements:

Needs
* flexibility with respect to aesthetics and typography
* have a portion of the museum home page that shows the next several upcoming museum events
* ability to create email lists to allow patrons to subscribe to relevant lists
* offer RSS feeds for museum press release pages
* maintain the majority of the current site’s look
* participate in brand mapping exercises and discussions related to the college’s brand and sub brands
* online credit card membership form
* e-commerce capability for museum bookstore directly through museum site
* flash banners
* rotating home page image with a click through
* ability to allow people to control font size easily (for accessibility/readability) with one click
* alt text balloons that follow the cursor so that image captions are noticeable (e.g.
http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=fr_FR

* online forms for teacher workshop and school group registration

* video-taped lectures for podcasts and vodcasts linked to exhibits (e.g. Art in Public Places iPod tour)

* ability to link to press published electronically on the campus newspaper site as well as other news sites (Addison Independent, BFP, Seven Days, e.g.) and maybe have those stories pulled into a sidebar

* ability to zoom in on images as well as 360 degree image rotation

* online searchable database of the museum collection that is linked to the library’s online catalogue search function so that when students search for books or other media related to objects in the museum collection they will be alerted that the museum holds works that are relevant to their subject

Wants
* be involved in focus groups and usability as design process begins
* create a ‘museum module’ that users could choose to put on their customizable middlebury.edu home page that would allow pushing of info about exhibits, events, and other museum news to users’ customizable home page
* liquid layout, or at least a wider fixed width (950 pixels)
* enable comments on exhibit pages to allow visitors to leave their thoughts about exhibits and related events
* offer virtual audio and video tours either streaming through the site or for download
* allow museum Friends to RSVP on-line for members-only events
* distribute 8.5×11 .pdfs of posters (for printing and distributing at schools, etc.)
* high-quality videos of classroom discussions about art
* tagging
* facebook site (fans of the museum) to reach people through facebook
* ability to create online versions of exhibits with unique appearance (i.e. NOT within existing templates)
* updated design treatment for the Committee on Art in Public Places (CAPP) website that creates a visual link between CAPP and the museum

Nice-to-Haves

* allow students to create their own online exhibits from items in the museum collection (e.g. like what the pachyderm project might allow)