Enhancing Student Engagement: iCampus Implementation at Illinois State University

1. iCampus Going Live at Illinois State University Michael Erdely - mjerdely@unicon.net Arturo Ramirez - aramir@ilstu.edu

2. Illinois State University • Founded 1857, first public University in Illinois • Public, coeducational, and residential • 160 undergraduate major/minor options in six colleges • 37 master programs, 2 Specialists, 7 Doctoral • 850 acre campus is located in central Illinois, the communities of Normal-Bloomington • Fall 2002 enrollment, approximately 17,500 undergraduates and 2,500 graduates • http://www.ilstu.edu/

3. Why go with a Portal • Educating Illinois strategic action plan • “Building a Technology Friendly Campus” • Create an alternative personalized view of available services • Homepage running out of real state space • Need for virtual one-stop student services • The purpose of going to a hardware store to buy a drill bit is not to own the bit but to make the hole …

4. Why go with uPortal • Open source framework for presenting aggregated content • Easiest route for adding value to existing systems • Commercially supportable • Based on XML/XSL transformations • The only open source portal developed by and for universities • Available content

5. State of affairs of iCampus • iCampus Demo • What is in iCampus • What can students see • What are all the channels • Why go with some UNICON channels • Current usage stats (Grades, Elections, Registration)

6. Login

7. Home

8. Redbird

9. Transactions

10. Schedule

11. Schedule/Map

12. Text Books

13. Grades

14. GPA2

15. Financial Aid

16. Financial Aid

17. Financial Aid

18. Financial Aid

19. Email

20. Registration

21. Registration

22. Registration

23. Registration

24. Registration

25. Registration

26. Registration2

27. Campus Life

28. People Search

29. Voting

30. Matrix Skin

31. State of Affairs - Statistics • Logins • At peak times between 700-1200 users login every hour • Voting • 4000 student surveys completed (36 hrs span) • Grades • 7000+ users checked their grades through the portal within 48 hrs of being posted • Registration (Sessions w/ 200 users aprox.) • 3,120 hits in one hour – almost 1 per second

32. How did things work before iCampus • Student Information Access System (SIAS) • Mainframe sessions: fast and reliable • Cumbersome interface • Accessible through TN 3270 emulator screens • Messages / errors had to be brief • Information restricted to 80 chars per line • Services that just weren’t available before • Redbird card, GPA Calculator, Financial aid awards accept/decline system

33. SIAS Terminal - Login

34. SIAS Terminal - Menu

35. SIAS Terminal - Registration Menu

36. SIAS Terminal - Registration

37. SIAS Terminal - Schedule

38. SIAS Terminal - Course Directory

39. SIAS Terminal - Postal Address

40. State of Affairs - Campus Services • Campus Services • Well organized but at times nowhere to be found • Departments changing links to their own pages • In general, did not provide custom information • Needed individualized attention • High dependency on individual department’s own resources

41. State of Affairs - Web

42. Risks • uPortal was in beta version at the time that iCampus work started • Technology curve was steep • Not enough buy in from the entire campus • How can we import legacy data • What if project failed • Do we want real time data presented to the students • Campus services are more visible so if something goes down people will notice

43. Engaging different departments • How do you get other departments to buy into this idea • Proving iCampus Portal reliability and success (Elections) • Saving them money (Eliminating mass mailings) • Less headaches for staff • Portal can get data across to the students in real time • Initial reaction against a consolidated portal • It’s my data! Mine, mine, mine!!! • It’s my hardware, my servers, my network!!!

44. Planning - History • Planning phase - (Spring ‘00 – Spring ‘01) • Committees work: Have a good plan before coding (users first, tech issues later) • Prototype phase – (Fall ‘01) • Focus on a small population and do extensive testing • Initial development and first online test • Going Live – (Summer ‘02) • 3000+ new freshman used for Preview program • More features than conservative planning proposed • Today – (Summer ‘03) • All 20K+ students, faculty and staff have access

45. Planning - Committees • Executive Development Group • Oversight Planning Committee • Development Team (16 campus staff) • Content Committee • E-commerce Committee • Digital Imaging Committee • Student Portfolio Planning Group(s) • Faculty Staff Portal content • LDAP Committee • ECAT

46. Planning - Groups • AIS (data and data delivery) • CISS (infrastructure) • IWSS (front end and features) • Registrar/admissions (SIAS one-stop) • Campus community (content committee & focus groups) Outside consulting • IBS Interactive Business Solutions/UNICON (uPortal consulting and programming)

47. Planning - Channels • How to come up with channels • Content Committee analyzed campus needs • Comes up with Initial list of 42 channels • List reduced to 15 possible roll out channels • Channel approvals go through Portal Content Committee before developers get anything going

48. Planning - Consulting Services • Why UNICON • Invaluable Experience • Wrote the initial uPortal prototype • Heavily involved in uPortal management and development • J2EE solutions for higher ed. since 1997 • uPortal Applications & Content • uPortal Professional Services • uPortal Training

49. Planning - People • How many employees to go with • Relative to budget, campus commitment • Training • uPortal training for portal developers and outside departments • Common technologies (i.e. XML) training among developers from diverse fields Web, Mainframe, etc • Focus groups • Basic load test

50. Planning - Money Budget: 500K