The Login to My Amherst link on the top right corner of Intranet provides access to a personalized Portal-a hub of dynamically generated information and customizable goodies, plus access to the user's Amherst homepage and public profile. In addition to the Portal, which features campus news, the site allows users to add news from all over the Internet and students to link to course Web sites and e-reserves, formerly only available from the Library homepage. The My Profile page, in addition to showing the user's public information, allows them to upload a personal photo. Importantly, users now have the option of easily creating their own Amherst page without necessarily knowing the intricacies of Web design and coding.
The homepage accommodates almost any type of digital material. Contents can be "tagged," a feature modelled on the popular online indexing technology that facilitates the gathering of articles relevant to topic keywords.
Community homepages are also available for course, organization and class Web sites. Faculty members can upload academic materials and have them immediately available to students in their class. The entire system gives its users flexible security control; they can limit access to parts of a page to certain groups such as students and alumni, or disable comments on the contents they post.
The system did not come into being in a day. The idea for a new, centralized CMS to replace the sprawling, incompatible structure of old Web sites and files was suggested two years ago by President Anthony Marx, said Director of Information Technology Peter Schilling.
One notable change was the integration of the entire alumni network into the College network, in the fashion of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. With this addition, the system now has around 30,000 users-a substantial investment of time and effort by the IT department that made it easier for students to search for and get in touch with alumni. Another improvement that has already been met with applause is an effort to simplify the creation and updating of personal pages for users without extensive technical knowledge. While acknowledging the success of existing features, Schilling and the IT department also plan on further enhancements such as stronger feeds and the integration of resources. The department welcomes feedback from the College community. For those who need help navigating around, the IT help desk offers office hours and walk-in training sessions.
Many students and faculty members are still getting acquainted with the new possibilities the system offers, but the general response is one of appreciation. Jian Li '10 commends the personalized site for its convenience and "no rubbish" approach and thinks she will create her own Amherst homepage, although she is still new to the system. Emmanuel Owusu-Amankwah '10 agrees that it will "take time to catch on," but is optimistic that the site will become a popular medium for publicity and "sharing stuff" thanks to the ease with which users can manage contents. He believes it will grow to be a part of Amherst campus life. Li, however, expressed the need for a message board and possibly a campus marketplace.
Faculty members are also enthusiastic about the efficiency the site brings. Professor Matthew Schulkind of the psychology department appreciates the automatically generated course offerings, which relieves professors of the task of updating them manually every semester. Also, according to Schulkind, "most of the faculty members in [the] department were not able to edit their own Web pages in the old system because they didn't know HTML." He explained, "Now everyone in the department can control the content of their own page, which is more convenient for everyone."
Professor of Arts and Art History Nicola Courtright, who has been actively utilizing the system to distribute materials for her class, applauded the fact that "when [she posts] something on [her] Web site, like the syllabus or electronic readings for [her] course, any student in the course immediately has them appear on his or her Web site." She is also excited about the personal photo feature and wishes her students to upload their pictures so that she could "get to know their names faster," because "nine-tenths of an art history class [takes place] in the dark."
When asked what further changes they would like to see, Schulkind mentioned the implementation of forms to collect information from students, and Courtright wanted the system to "duplicate the functions of Blackboard" so that she would not have to post contents twice. The present system is, according to the IT department, far from the final product; more features will be added as the term progresses.