Candi’s Journey through the Portal

1. Candi’s Journey through the Portal • This is a brief summary of our journey listing:- key points, challenges and solutions ! • I will talk on the general process and how we decided to develop the requirements and work out what the portal would include and the overall vision. • Paul will then speak about the more technical process of realising this goal and the creation of the structure and elements involved in the portal.

2. PORTAL PROJECT Started last year (November) with the aim of investigating how the students would benefit from a personalised portal and with the aim of creating one ! The idea was part of an objective coming directly from SMT to: Improve the Learning Experience of students in a global society

3. From the start there was involvement from SMT this helped to drive the project and involve the whole college. This was essential to ensure all the resources and time required were made available for the development and completion of this project.

4. 2 questions came to mind initially What information do we want on our portal What are other colleges doing with theirs For 1) We had some ideas but we wanted to look at the whole idea a fresh For 2) We decided to meet with other colleges to see what they were doing.

5. Deciding what to put on the portal • Involved representation from right around the college. People sat on the portal group from many departments around the college including MIS, ICT, Student engagement, Learning centre.. • Everybody contributed to a grid which listed ideas for information to be displayed. • We decided priorities for each item to be displayed and produced a list for phase 1 and phase 2 implementation.

6. What had other colleges done ? • We realised there was a huge variation in what different colleges meant by the term student portal. • This ranged from document / course information sharing. • To systems integrating information about the student from different sources. • We quickly realisedthatwhat we were attempting was something totally different and taking the personalisation to another level.

7. Our Portal Vision • As a place where key information personal to the student would be summarised and displayed. • As an access point or doorway through to other systems • This required solving two main problems from a technical perspective. Two main ways the portal would operate

8. Two main problems • Accessing and displaying information from the different key systems within the college. • Allowing students to automatically go through to these key systems. Before we look at a slightly more technical view of how we solved these, which Paul will present, lets just have a quick look at what we wanted to display on the portal and our basic design.

9. Some of the information we wanted to display • Messages relevant to the student e.g. filtered by student age range and centre etc. • Information from blackboard VLE e.g. tasks and information about their courses. • Details from MIS system on the student which they could check and use to put a request for change in place. • Student timetables (also from MIS system) • PC’s booked • Library books and library fines which were outstanding

10. Initial Vision of the Portal So lets look at what the vision was for the portal incorporating all these elements. Then we can see how we went about the process of creating it.

11. Name suggested by learners Accessibility information about how to use my.candi Personalised link direct to own courses within blackboard Information from daily Registers Historical information shown • My Message • By class from blackboard • By mode • By centre • Personalised • By class from blackboard • By mode • By centre

15. Moving from Vision to Realisation So it was my task to aid in helping us to realise this vision, using the platforms and web tools within the college and creating an integration between the data systems.

16. First task was to look for a platform in which all this information would sit We wanted to step back and assess a fresh, all possible ways of providing the portal framework and not just automatically go with SharePoint. We looked at housing it within: • Blackboard VLE • Microsoft SharePoint • Off the shelf packages • Unite Amongst others.

17. After analysing the situation We ended up with SharePoint as the best possible solutions due to these factors: • We already had knowledge in the college of developing with it. • It was already being used in the college for staff and student intranets and by staff and students. • It had all the features which were required for our foundation but without having a particular bias such as Blackboard, which would have been primarily geared towards one role (as a VLE). • Its is also relatively low cost and the licenses and infrastructure were already in place.

18. Planning of connecting systems Now we had decided on our framework we needed to look at connecting our systems to our portal but before we can do this we needed to: • Look at what systems we want to connect to the portal • What data they held • And how often it is updated * *this is essential because this information is now going to be viewable by students live so we need to keep it as up to date as possible.

19. Reviewing our information systems So to achieve the previous aims we need a thorough review of our data systems: • There was a review of each systems information – what does is hold and what does it relate to and which aspects are relevant to the portal • How up to date is this information ? Who manages the process of updating it ? • How can we connect to it ? – is it in a database like SQL Server or is it accessed through a url like Heritage or in a bespoke system like PCounter • A map of the data and associated processes was then compiled by the department responsible for the data.* * The process of creating the portal impacted and improved many other areas within the college and one ‘knock on’ effect was an improvement in the way our information systems worked and an improved understanding of their interconnection.

20. How do we actually implement the connection and display of information on our portal So having now decided upon a framework namely SharePoint and having deepened our understanding of the systems we want to connect to. We need to look at the various technologies available for implementing this connection, there are several options: • Use SharePoint Designer – essentially a design tool • SharePoint programmed web parts in a programming language such as C# • Off the shelf web parts by third parties • Web parts developed by an outside company Among others.

21. Creating the connections We started our development by using data view web parts created in SharePoint designer: • These are great for prototyping and easy to put together. No programming required but they aren’t as flexible as coded web parts. • For the library web part these weren’t sufficient so we looked at programmed C# web parts. • We decided to move down this road for all web parts. This does require programming but its possible to a user configurable options and flexibility can be built in for users. • Now we are looking at developing generic web parts which could be configured to access many data different sources. IMPORTANT: One aspect considered when coming up with our development model is allowing the portal to easily be updated in the future. We want to avoid bottlenecks in future development and reliance on just one member of staff.

22. Deploying the portal We then invitedin a design company with specialist skills in producing SharePoint master pages and designs: • We selected the best design. • They produced the Masterpages and SharePoint solution packages. • We implemented and tested out the designs – this required some technical know how, mainly with regard to SharePoint administration. • Then we started to set up the live environment and test. • The web parts were styled, setup and tested. • The My Candi portal went live.

23. The future With regard to the future I am in the process of developing a way in which the portal can be used to help the process of updating itself. • A form could be filled in where a staff member requests some information to be made available for display on the portal – This would start a SharePoint workflow. • The department responsible for the information could approve the request. • A request would be sent to the Database administrator who could create a stored procedure. • The approval and completion of the technical set up could be sent to the person initially requesting the information. • A generic web part is added to the required page and the information is selected from a dropdown list for display. And configured accordingly by the person requesting it The whole process managed from within SharePoint !

24. Staff Portal We are also now looking at a staff portal which would provide similar functionality but for our staff and provide a powerful framework for communication between students and staff using messaging facilities. We are also investigating SharePoint 2010 as a possible upgrade for all our SharePoint systems. Some of the benefits: • Improved visual appearance – uses silverlight (like flash on steroids) • It has greater flexibility in connecting to external database sources without requiring web parts to be created. • Has improved editing interface and consistency with office (Now with new Ribbon !)

25. Key points • Must be driven from SMT to make available the resources and time required. • Involve people from all areas of the college. • Consider all possible systems when developing, although SharePoint is normally a very clear winner in cases where you are creating an intranet or portal. • Take the opportunity to review procedures and benefits other areas of the college as a consequence of the project. • Look at different technologies but also consider how future developments and updates will be carried out – how easily can developments be made ? Is there a bottleneck ? • If need be, buy in skills required, design or development as needed (if buying in design get a SharePoint oriented design company) • Automate the process of requesting and updating the system within SharePoint itself if possible (if this is the system used).

26. Extra Benefits • Review of data systems and how they work plus increased efficiency • Brought together different teams within the college not normally associated • Created a new way of thinking of college systems which lead to other developments. • Changes to some procedures and practices which haven’t been looked at for a while (student lock out and student email format). • Start of the journey into greater and more flexible communication between staff and students – staff portal.

27. And Finally with regard to college collaboration • Great scope for the sharing of resources and information between colleges which is what this event is all about. • By sharing practices it raises colleges access to the skills and knowledge required to develop portals and intranets in their own unique way. • We could possibly have an area where colleges could login and access code / documents and see useful information (its ok it doesn’t have to be a SharePoint area !) • We could also have a common knowledge base of problems and solutions shared between colleges. • And a list of some good suppliers and the areas their expertise was used in. Thank you for listening and now to the My Candi portal !