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to Enablers of Institutional Goals
Features
Transforming Portals from Gateways
to Enablers of Institutional Goals
9/26/2003
For some institutions, the term “portal” brings to mind a gateway
to an institution’s online resources and services. Sophisticated portals
and integration technology enable much more than just a unified gateway. Portals
have the potential to become the ultimate point of organizational integration,
where the university community can access electronic services and resources
in support of quality teaching and learning.
Like most institutions, Webster University has been doing a pretty good job of delivering basic Web services. We now offer students complete degree programs online. Yet, the students can’t conduct all of their university business electronically. Currently, Webster University’s Web services have more to do than meet isolated functional needs—they must be woven together to serve the university’s overall goal of providing increased access and convenience in support of teaching and learning.
We determined that we must implement new portal technology that would achieve
the following three objectives:
• Distribute the capability for Web content management throughout the
institution while maintaining consistent presentation and navigation.
• Provide centralized and customized access from a single sign on.
• Integrate all underlying data and applications.
We are currently in the process of implementing SCT’s Luminis software to achieve these objectives. We expect the implementation to be complete at the end of 2004.
Maintaining Consistent Presentation and Navigation of Web Content
Like other institutions, we place an emphasis on allowing easy and flexible access to our resources and curricula. We have 100 educational centers throughout the U.S. and seven international sites including Switzerland, China, and Thailand.
Each of our extended sites has a unique identity and message to convey to the students. Individual departments want Web pages and a Web presence, but not every location has access to a knowledgeable graphic designer or a good writer. It is impossible for our IT staff to reach and train individuals at all our sites on how to develop good content for the Web and link it well. Our challenge is to provide authors in this distributed environment with the tools they need to get their content out on the Web while maintaining a consistent and user-friendly Web presence.
To address this issue, we licensed content management software that will give non-tech users throughout the world the tools needed to easily publish their unique content within an attractive and navigable framework. In addition, these tools will allow our various sites to keep their Web content up-to-date, which is essential to the success of our Web efforts. We’ve learned the hard way that creating Web pages is only the beginning. Those pages must be kept current, otherwise, the effort is wasted.
When implemented, this content management model will allow our staff worldwide to manage content within a framework that provides ease of use, accessibility, and a consistent presentation of the university’s image online.
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