The group reviewed and discussed the minutes from our previous meeting.  Hilary will review the brainstorm list of communities that might use a portal, and will re-organize the list to show some larger groups with examples.

Hilary shared a book from abut college portals, and will make some copies of useful information to share at a later date.

Rip explained the new Content Management System.  We discussed the relationship of the CMS to a possible portal.

Hilary outlined the following items to structure our upcoming work.

·        What is a portal?

·        What resources do we need?

·        Who will do the work?

·        What will costs be?

·        What are the benefits?

·        Who are the decision-makers?

My Evergreen is a “rudimentary” portal in that it has some portal-like functions, but there are additional possibilities it does not currently have.

Definition: A portal is something that allows authentication and authorization of a user to see role-specific information.  In addition, the institution can push out content specific to the user.

Some portals allow customization by the user.  We need to figure out what will draw users to use it – including appropriate customization.  Luminos is a complete portal solution and allows customization – yet the institution still controls available customizing content

Rip pointed out that we want to provide info in the  most digestible way possible. 

Tony pointed out that there are always these tensions:

·        Users want to see what they want to see when they go to a portal,

·        There are business needs also – alerts about deadlines, bills, or other things we think are important to tell our users..

We began to list requirements.  (As Selmarie points out - Form Follows Function.)

General Requirements:

Attractive – users find it valuable and will come there.

Needs to provide Banner info as appropriate

Needs to allow a user to find precisely and quickly the information that they need without having to wade though a whole web site.

Hilary reminded us that we do already have the list of what the online community software should be able to do from our previous meeting minutes.

Rip and Tony talked about the idea that The Portal is Dead.  What if we used different kinds of ways to get information out to users.  RSS feeds to their phones, etc.

Current students have reasons to come to the table (or to a portal) – register, pay tuition, etc.

My provides appropriate generic information content

Could add Drupal to My for custom content.

Could allow adding blocks and changing background colors as well as specific content components.

We then generated some lists of requirements specific to groups of users.  (NOTE: These lists are brainstorms, and are not in order of importance and are likely to be incomplete.)

Current Students

Remind student to apply for Housing

Remove reminder for those  who have already applied.

Links to housing rates & info

Apply for dining services

Student Activity notices – by student group (can choose to receive these or not)

Reduce spam

Bills

Apply for Fin Aid

Apply for Scholarships

Evergreen Notices Feed

View Fin Aid app progress

Appropriate Security levels

Remind other FAO dates

Tell student when have FA Award (online acceptance?)

Tell student about changes to FA Awards

Alert on users page when there is something one needs to take care of about FA

Same as above for Student Account

How can we expand My to include useful info and customization?

Important dates – quarter dates, fifth week, Master calendar, etc.

Provide content from curricular tools

RSS or other appropriate technology for feeds.

Prospective Students

All  Current list, plus:

Important deadlines and alerts

“Put them here on campus”

Create a pre-Evergreen community

Customize content around curricular areas

High level of content and images change – keep it fresh

Prospectives have their Own Homepage

Access to a ‘Program Picker’ type of feature

Develop interactivity with other current and prospective students

Ability from Administration to push to certain groups – e.g visiting from Maryland, conditional admits, etc.   Population selection.

Alums

Form a community as students leave – don’t disconnect

Inform them of what’s going on

How to connect with other alums

MyEmma – Load info form Banner – addresses, looks like a post card or news letter

Highlight certain alums

Info tidbits about alums

Could check info we have about them and update it

Allow forums and meetings and minutes of such events – history

Sort out by geographic groups

Conduct surveys

Keep engaged to find ways to volunteer or donate, etc.

We plan to continue developing requirements by needs of specific groups.  We already see overlaps.

The meeting closed with an discussion about how often we should meet, and when.