Web Admin - Meeting Notes
March 2003
Ahh... Millett Hall. I think there was a unanimous decision that the Millett lab was a distinct improvement over all prior meeting rooms. Very nice, indeed!But I digress...
OK, we started by looking at Undergraduate Admissions new site. Not so much a focus on the design and layout, but we were looking more closely at the technical wonders, namely the "Virtual Advisor" and Chat. The virtual advisor allows students to type in natural-language questions and get straight-forward answers. "What are tuition costs?" "What sports facilities are available?" Although answers will always come up with the overall Undegrad Admissions appearance, the question box can be located anywhere. (Although we suggest that if you do use it, that you warn users that they will be shifted over to another site.) And, to ensure that users will return where they came from, we've included a "Return to the page where you first asked a question" link so your sites won't be totally lost and subject to having the student dig around for them again. The online chats were held for the first time on March 10. UA wanted to have specific chat 'events' open to anyone, although we have the ability to restrict access to only authorized users. We did ask for name/contact info from guests, but we can also have users log in completely anonymously as well. The UA chats went well overall -- although we have yet to really test the capacity with regards to the number of simultaneous users. Give me a buzz if you're interested in accessing either the virtual advisor or setting up a chat feature for your program/department.
We're working on revamping the Course Descriptions. Currently, they are being sent out of the Registrar's Office manually, and we're hard-coding the HTML for use on the web site. We're looking at essentially developing a course database online that will be able to be accessed for any number of purposes. We'll be able to pull classes down (and format them!) in just about any configuation we wish... which in turn will also be available to other web administrators on campus. We're still trying to determine exactly what information we have access to, and how best to get that updated automatically.
In connection with that, we're looking at re-working the Distance Learning site. By looking at the section 90 courses, we'll be able to pull out things specifically for DL. This isn't 100% accurate at this time, but Terri Klaus and myself will be trying to use this to 'force' the issue of consistency.
We're looking at revamping the Library site. Much of their information is currently hard-coded, but after meeting with them, it looks as if we'll be able to more extensively utilize their online card catalog already in existence. We're currently looking into the catalog database to examine what is and is not possible with it.
Since the whole "portal" thing is taking forever for CaTS to implement, AND once they do decided on one, it will take forever again to get that up and running, we'll be going ahead with a new online calendar. We had been waiting to get something that would be compatible with any portal option that might be bought, but we're not going to worry about that any more, and just charge forward so we have something working for the next few years. I've narrowed down my seach to two software packages, but once it's implemented, you'll all have access to add events and such for your individual programs/schools/departments.
We're also working on redesigning sites for the School of Professional Psychology (tons of information with several layers of navigation needed), the WSU Pharamacy, and the Technology Transfer Office which helps gets researchers' ideas out into the public sector.
Finally, because there seems to be a perpetual problem of not being able to get things done because of red tape, my boss and I will be meeting with the Dean's Council on April 1 to talk about the importance of developing and maintaining a good web site. There needs to be some top-down support for moving forward with some of our projects (and by "our" I mean ALL the web administrators, as I'm sure you all run into many of the same problems I do) and getting the proper impetus for effective communication at all levels of operation.
That's all I had, but Kurt Cypher graciously provided us with a document of all of the broken links on the main server. While a great deal of them fall to the Web Team to correct, I would ask that everyone go through to look for anything your various departments might have control over.
