Darrel S. Huish Katherine J. Ranes Arizona State University Lessons Learned During the First Year of myASU, a Large Institution Portal Copyright Darrel Huish 2002. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.
Transcript
Darrel S. HuishKatherine J. Ranes
Arizona State University
Lessons Learned During the First Year of
myASU, a Large Institution Portal
Copyright Darrel Huish 2002. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.
– Large multi-campus institution– over 50,000 students
• Central IT organization serving many department needs
• Various computer architectures
Timeline
• Visioning – Spring 2000• Request for Proposal – Summer 2000• Project Begins – Nov 2000• Pilot – Feb 2001• Installation – March 2001• Conversion – Summer 2001• Production – August 2001
Lesson One – Vision is Important
Do you have a clear understanding of what a portal means to your institution?
Vision
myASU is Arizona State University’s portal: a customizable and personalizable web page that gives users access to a mix of news, services, resources, applications, and online courses. The goal of myASU is to provide a single point of entry on the web that is useful enough to be everyone’s start page and provide “one-stop shopping” for ASU information and everything else.
Vision
myASU is Arizona State University’s portal: a customizable and personalizable web page that gives users access to a mix of news, services, resources, applications, and online courses. The goal of myASU is to provide a single point of entry on the web that is useful enough to be everyone’s start page and provide “one-stop shopping” for ASU information and everything else.
Lesson Two – Build on your Strengths
What resources do you already have that could contribute to your portal development?
Some of our strengths• Evolving authentication environment
with ASURITE Id and Web-based authentication
• Web-based student services• Web-based e-mail client for students • Web-based e-mail client for MS Outlook• Experience with Blackboard• Widespread acceptance of Blackboard
Lesson Three – Two sides of the coin
How will teaching and learning and the other facets of university life interact within the portal?
Dilemmas
• Well-established Teaching and Learning environment gives tremendous exposure
• Portal can be drowned in traffic• Dogs and Tails• Guidance, Governance, Leadership
Options
• On-line teaching and learning is independent of the portal
• Extend the on-line teaching and learning environment and make that your portal
• Render your teaching and learning within a portal
• Provide a way to link to course content
Lesson Four – A Long way to Go
How do we reach our goal? How do sustain the portal and make it vital and dynamic?
Never Give Up, Never Surrender
Revisit and Refresh the Vision Revisit and Re-evaluate the
Technology Managing change is like buying
bananas Be stubborn about the vision and
goals
To Meet Our Vision
Information and applications that:• students need in order to have a quality university
experience • faculty need to teach and do research• employees need to do their jobs• employees need to manage their relationship with the
university • alumni need to feel a sense of community & ongoing
affiliation• prospective students and their parents need to make
enrollment decisions• puts ASU’s “best foot forward” in the community
• Information (links, brochure-ware)– Designed for the ASU Community
• Applications that provide individual ASU services– Information is specific to the user– Information is specific to ASU– Available through a request or every time you enter
myASU– Examples:
• Official grades, Accounts, ASU announcements
First page
First page after invoking a channel
ASU Bookmarks – Services Tab
Portal Modules
• Bb supplied modules (Horoscope, etc.)
• 28 customizable shells • Bb Platform Builder
– Limited architecture– Build dynamic channels using JSP’s to
connect to data sources– Information in channels is specific to
user
Portal Modules• ASU Directory
Search• ASU Google Search• ASU Library Search• ASU News
Headlines• My Eligibility to
Register
• MyASU Announcements
• My Enrollment Info• My Financial Info• My Grades• My Class
Overrides• My Payroll Info
Portal Modules
E-Mail Integration
• ASU had a webmail system in place for student use
• Small changes to the Bb database allowed us to point to our webmail servers instead of the provided system (mailspinner)
• Our existing delivery system uses framed pages, easily integrated with Bb framed site
