2008 Woodie Awards
Portal bugs being worked out
By: Andy Dierker
Issue date: 11/17/05 Section: News
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Webster's Connections Portal, the online interface students, faculty and staff can use for e-mail, calendars, or simple communication with other people on campus, has been updated with more features and more content. With these updates have come new problems, however, as well as a couple problems still lingering around from the portal's launch earlier this year.
Larry Haffner, vice president of information technology (IT) at Webster, said classes are adapting to use the new features.
"Things are going well, it's getting a lot of use," Haffner said.
Haffner said their first priority for the semester was getting the course tools online, which can be used to post files between a professor and his or her students, among other things. Next on the agenda is a feature called targeting messaging.
"If you send out a message to all students, it goes out to everyone worldwide, even people that aren't enrolled at the time," Haffner said. "Targeted messaging would allow us to specific departments, specific majors, etc."
Also in the works is the integration of student class registration into the Connections interface.
"We're going to take a shot at having it ready for the spring registration, which would be the sign-up for Fall 2006 classes," Haffner said. "We've still got some technical hurdles to get up and over though, so we'll see."
Haffner said trying to combine other parts of the school's online interface into Connections is hard, but worth it. By combining them, students can do everything from one portal, instead of being forced to log in separately for WebCT, Connections, e-mail and other university functions online.
But some people still can't use Connections in the way they might like.
Dottie Englis, professor and chair of the theater and dance department, said she and other professors can't connect to the portal and distribute files and information like the other departments because of how the system is set up.
Larry Haffner, vice president of information technology (IT) at Webster, said classes are adapting to use the new features.
"Things are going well, it's getting a lot of use," Haffner said.
Haffner said their first priority for the semester was getting the course tools online, which can be used to post files between a professor and his or her students, among other things. Next on the agenda is a feature called targeting messaging.
"If you send out a message to all students, it goes out to everyone worldwide, even people that aren't enrolled at the time," Haffner said. "Targeted messaging would allow us to specific departments, specific majors, etc."
Also in the works is the integration of student class registration into the Connections interface.
"We're going to take a shot at having it ready for the spring registration, which would be the sign-up for Fall 2006 classes," Haffner said. "We've still got some technical hurdles to get up and over though, so we'll see."
Haffner said trying to combine other parts of the school's online interface into Connections is hard, but worth it. By combining them, students can do everything from one portal, instead of being forced to log in separately for WebCT, Connections, e-mail and other university functions online.
But some people still can't use Connections in the way they might like.
Dottie Englis, professor and chair of the theater and dance department, said she and other professors can't connect to the portal and distribute files and information like the other departments because of how the system is set up.