The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Taking portals to users
ALT-C 2004
September 14-16
Jill Armstrong, HE Academy
Tom Franklin, Franklin Consulting
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Session aims
• For you– Understand our thinking / vision on portals
and provision– portal provision is a leap of faith
• For us– Sanity check on our vision– Better understanding of your needs
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
"A web page does not a portal make" Strauss
• A portal is not a website
• A portal is more than bringing information together on a web page
• A portal is not only about access to information
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
What is a portal (2)
• Changing work practices
• Supporting work flows
• Bringing people together
• Bringing tools and information together as needed
• Integrating resources
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Reaching users
• Get people to come to your portal
• Take your service to them
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Portals of choice
• "Too many Portals of choice" Slater
• Users will use their institutional portal
• Or their learned society / subject home?
• How to get users to use your portal
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Getting the users to come to the portal
• Define the audience
• Market to them
• Provide everything that they need better than the competitors
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Taking services to the user
• Channels within portals
• Embedded in institutional portals
• Work with institutional portal providers to deliver services
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
www.Connect.ac.uk
• Developing a set of learning and teaching portal services:– Funding opportunities– Project finder– Organisation finder– Resources– Discussion forum
Embedded within web sites or portals
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Virtual organisations
Jorum Repository
FDTL materials resources
CETLs
resources
JISC projects’ materials
HE Academyresources
Other repositories
Aggregator(Metadata)
RDN Hubs Other sites
HE AcademyPortal
HEI/FEIPortals
Web-sites
Channel SearchChannel
WP Subject Centre Liaison
Group
VLEs
Connect: Learning and Teaching Portal Services
L&T Organisations
Service
Resources & materials
Projectfinder
Service
Community tools
Funding opps.
Service
EmployabilityNetwork
Subject Centres databases
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Taking portal services to users
• Come to Connect web-site or –
• Create a link from your institutional site
• Create a customised link
• Embed our services
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Connect web site
• Advantages– no development effort by institutions– same for everyone wherever they are
• Disadvantages– have to know it is there– have to consciously go to it– different "look and feel"
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Link from a web page
• Advantages– quick– easy– anyone can do it– provider keeps all control
• Disadvantages– providers look and feel– no customisation– no integration - a bunch of stand alone services
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Link from a web page with customisation
• Advantages– simple– offers similar look and feel to rest of web
site / portal
• Disadvantages– not fully integrated– requires some technical knowledge– limited customisation
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Embedding
• Advantages– fully integrated with portal– wholly customised
• Disadvantages– Technically complex– Looks and behaves differently depending on
where you are– Rapidly changing technology / standards– Service looses control
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Portal embedding project
• Standards and environment
• JSR168 and WSRP and RLLOMAP
• WSRP4J, Java
• SOAP
• See http://www.cetis.ac.uk:8080/frameworks
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Portal reality check
• Does your institution have a portal?
• Or maybe more than one portal already!
• When will your institution have portal technologies that will enable you to personalise the services that reach your desk-top?
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
User reality check
• How do you see yourself working with services like these?
• Are we pursuing a workable model that meets user needs?
• What type of services should we provide centrally?
The Higher Education Academy
Franklin Consulting
Taking portals to users
Jill Armstrong, HE Academy
Tom Franklin, Franklin Consulting
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