Chapters in Books (Curriculum Studies)

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Browsing Chapters in Books (Curriculum Studies) by Author "Pina, Ralph"

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    Student and staff portals as support channels for the first-year academy
    (2009) Van der Merwe, Antoinette; Pina, Ralph
    Introduction: Using technology to support student learning is well accepted, but using technology to support systemic initiatives is a less well-known approach. This paper discusses some of the issues that should be taken into account when designing portals and shares some of the innovative approaches adopted at Stellenbosch University (SU) in order to support the First-year Academy (FYA) initiative. In 2002, SU initiated the Portal Project, an ambitious drive to develop and establish web portals as key infrastructure and tools for campus communities. Since then, three web portals have been developed and rolled out; namely, a student portal (www.mymaties.com), an alumni portal (www.matiesalumni.net) and a staff portal (my.sun.ac.za). The FYA is an academic initiative focused on the success of all first-year students and was officially launched at the beginning of 2007. One of the specific aims identified by the coordinating committee of this initiative was to investigate the use of portals as communication channels to students, lecturers and parents or the persons responsible for the specific first-year student’s account. Timeous and targeted communication with these stakeholder groups on the progress of this group of students is of utmost importance to enhance the students’ chances to achieve success. The coordinating committee felt that the portals, as ‘user-centric’ communication channels, would be ideally suited to fulfil this role (First-year Academy Coordinating Committee, 2006:10). This chapter will firstly provide some background as to how Stellenbosch University identifies a portal. It will then show how the portals specifically add value to the FYA initiative. The chapter will also show how the portals strive to provide student-centric and staff-centric places of work, integrating many useful functions, services and information feeds into a common interface. We will share useful lessons learnt, as well as what we consider to be critical success factors for institutional portals. Finally, we will provide a glimpse of future plans.