Recently,
the University's student intranet has been replaced by the
CityU e-portal. This marks the beginning of a new era in the
use of electronic communications in the University.
There
is no doubt that the World Wide Web (WWW) has completely transformed
the use of computer networks for distribution of information.
Everybody, from large multi-national corporations to single
individuals, is putting up WEB sites that promote and describe
their organization or the services they provide.
In the
University, a lot of effort has been put into maintaining
the University's home pages. This is the University's gateway
to the internet and is an important way to introduce the University
to the general public.
The University
has also set up separate intranets for our staff and student
members in order to disseminate information applicable to
the intended category of users.
For both
the internet and intranet, academic departments and administrative
units have developed their own departmental "home"
pages. Instructors have also put up home pages for their courses,
and students have personal web pages for themselves. Soon,
we are swamped in a sea of information.
One problem
with these home pages is that they are all organized from
the point of view of the content provider. This leaves the
user of the information to search for the relevant information
at the time they want them. This is, at best, a hit and miss
proposition.
Portals
are solutions to this problem of content management. Under
a portal, information is dynamically organized and presented
from a user's point of view. The goal is to make sure that
the right information is presented to the user at the right
time.
In the
University, we have several major constituents, - staff, student
and alumni. We realize that the information needs of each
of these constituents are widely different. In the current
implementation of the University's e-portal, we have decided
to focus our attention on our primary constituent - the students.
We have thus described our portal as a portal for student
learning.
When a
student logon, she is linked immediately to her personal data
in our student management system. Links are established to
the courses that she is taking, to the website of her home
department, and to special references that have been prepared
for her in the library. There are also links to general references
like an online dictionary, resources on Hong Kong, etc. The
list of these useful websites will continue to grow as we
receive feedback from the users.
An important
feature of the portal is our "headline banners"
that bring together information on activities, events and
news that are of interest to students. For example, in a "banner"
that announces the release of course grades, links are provided
to the parts of the "academic regulations" that
contain information on the definition of grades and academic
standing and on procedures for appeal of course grades.
Although
we have focused the design of the portal to the needs of the
student, it does not mean that the portal is not important
to the rest of the University. Indeed, because we are here
for the students, the portal is in fact of utmost relevance
to everyone that works in the University. The analogy would
be to a student newspaper. Although the target audience of
the newspaper is the students, most staff members of the University
would pick up a copy of the newspaper to learn what their
students do. Staff members are urged to logon to the portal
and browse. (It only takes a couple of minutes a day!) Staff
members, as content providers, are also urged to consider
the power of this new medium and how they can make use of
it to enhance communications with their students.