Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Focus
Reading Between the Lines
9/29/2004
2 - For/About.
With drop-down menus, a lot of navigational options are compressed into a small space, but they’re still uncluttered and easy to grasp. That’s because the Web site captures the two main ways that the information on a site can be organized: by who the visitor is (alumnus, prospective student, faculty, etc.), or by what topic the visitor is interested in (“About”). The “About” topics have drop-down menus that are activated by mouse roll-over, providing an easy way to glimpse the next level of info available. Visitors don’t have to click down and then back up to see what comes next.
3 - myRIT.
myRIT opens the door to a vast array of information available to insiders such as current students, faculty, and staff. Students can check grades and register for classes, powered by the campus information system. For fun and general information, the Rochester weather forecast and live views from the RIT Web Cam invite visitors to check out the weather for themselves, and site navigators can also view a calendar of goings-on—even a dictionary word-of-the-day. (A recent example: “Flaneur: loafer.”)4 - Guest View.
The “Guest View” button lets non-community visitors wander through non-confidential parts of the portal system and get a taste of what the campus has to offer. (Many portal-equipped systems lack this courtesy to visitors—or keep it tucked away.) RIT provides more powerful portal accounts to prospective students and alumni.
5 - Campus Directory.
Ever been frustrated wandering around a school’s site trying to find out how to contact somebody? Directory look-up information is so basic that it ought to be found right at the top level—and it is at RIT. If your institution has a policy against publishing such information on the Web, consider telling a visitor that fact before he wastes time scouting around. Then suggest other means your visitors can use to contact people at your institution; a general number, at the very least.
6 - Flash Slide Show.
(Live rotation.) Yes, flash animations are controversial—so much so that some users install software that disables Flash on every site they visit. RIT came up with an effective compromise, however. This central illustration d'es dissolve into a running slide show while the page is viewed. But far from being just generic campus-brochure photography, each shot nails a specific personality trait of RIT, and text is matched with the image to further illustrate the point. What’s more, the Flash graphics are well-behaved; they stay within a frame and don’t scoot distractingly around the page. Most importantly, the information in the Flash slide show, while complementary to the page, is not essential for navigation. And RIT provides a button that lets visitors turn the animation off with a single click.
John Savarese is a consulting principal with Edutech International.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Tiffin U's New Online College to Use Pearson's eCollege for Course Management
Beginning this fall, students in Tiffin University's newest online program, Ivy Bridge College, will use eCollege, a course management system from Pearson, for all of their online courses. The 2,350-student Tiffin U is located in Tiffin, OH and offers both on-campus and online classes. Since 2005, those online courses have been managed through Jenzabar Internet Campus Solution.
- California Community Colleges Adopt SunGard Banner Software
California's Rio Hondo College and Sierra College have selected software from the Banner Unified Digital Campus and other solutions from SunGard Higher Education to help address their growing enrollments and to help improve student retention and services.
- Luidia Releases eBeam Interact 2.1 for Interactive Whiteboards
Luidia has released a new version its eBeam software for use with classroom-based interactive projection environments. eBeam Interact 2.1 offers both new and upgraded features, including enhanced screen recording and a comprehensive online image gallery, as well as the company's Scrapbook Image Writer feature.
- McGill U Library Scanning Rare Books with Kirtas
McGill University Library in Montreal will be using a Kirtas Technologies APT BookScan 2400RA to digitize its collections. The company says that the 2400RA is capable of acquiring page images at the rate of 2,400 pages per hour. The library will be working with Ristech, a Canadian reseller, to implement the digitization solution.
- Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore
Ball State University in Muncie, IN has gone public regarding its deployment of a Web site content management system from Sitecore. Ball State chose Sitecore's software to revamp its 220-plus sites, integrating common new media applications and garnering a next-generation user experience that has won several awards from education and new media marketing organizations. Now, Ball State maintains uniformity across all university Web sites and said it has enhanced its recruiting efforts through the site's new look and interface.
- Bio-Key Launches Emergency Alert Platforms for Schools
Bio-Key International has announced the release of two new emergency alert and management solutions for the education market. MobileSRO is designed specifically for the K-12 environment, while MobileCampus caters to higher education and other campus-based organizations.
