University Park, Pa. -- While a number of research universities across the nation are rethinking their portals - and even retiring them - Penn State's Portal is alive and kicking, providing numerous community services, plus a cost-effective way for students, staff and faculty to manage today's high-volume Internet data.
This semester, an expansion and remodeling of the Penn State Portal now offers its users a total of 380 "channels" that can be selected to provide news, career planning services, weather, Web cameras, arts, entertainment, science, event calendars and more. Portal users can also select between fourteen new interface themes, designed to help Penn State community members customize and personalize their own "digital view" of University and Commonwealth services.
"What makes this Portal unique, is that it's being created by our entire community - we're collaborating directly with University groups and individuals to build it," explains Gary Augustson, vice provost for information technology. "Students staff and faculty are all contributing to the design, which makes the process inclusive... and ensures that Portal users truly 'own' the information it provides."
The use of open source software (freely shared products) in the Portal construction process has enabled the University to reduce the operational costs and allow Penn State constituents such as Food and Housing and the Office of Human Resources to design their own Portal content, according to Augustson.
Other University areas such as Career Services, Diversity, Student Affairs, HUB Late Night (Penn State's student union entertainment program) and the School of Music have used the "events" version of the software to design a wide range of activity calendars for their areas, that can then be selected by Portal users depending on their interests.
Penn State's students have also contributed to the Portal design - and many are enthusiastic users. "It pulls all the information I need together in one place and makes access to Internet information so much easier," said Mark Anderson, a junior in the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). Another feature Mark mentions he enjoys is the file sharing capabilities available through the Portal's built-in secure file transfer tool, the PASS Explorer. "When I need to transfer large files from my classes to the Web it's much more convenient do this directly from the Portal," he comments.
One of the Portal's newest features, an Office of Human Resources channel created over the summer, enables faculty and staff to scan employment listings as they become available at University Park and other Penn State campuses. The channel, which was developed in collaboration with staff in the Office of Human Resources (OHR), allows users to search and save specific search criteria, including Penn State job locations and grade levels. The Job Search channel is seamlessly integrated with the current OHR bidding system and produces search results that range between one grade lower and two grades higher than the grade level searched upon.
In addition to new channels, the fourteen new themes (nine "color" and five "Penn State") unveiled this September enable Portal users to adapt specific interface design elements according to their individual preferences. Each theme involves a header image paired with a complimentary color scheme, which users may modify and change at any time through the Portal's built-in Preferences screen. To correspond with the new look and feel, updated controls also have been added, giving Portal users the ability to more quickly and easily edit channels and access online help and documentation.
As universities and organizations worldwide search for ways to organize digital materials, Augustson envisions that portals will become essential content management tools. "Penn State is mobilizing both people and resources to meet the current information management challenge in higher education today," he observed. "Our success is that a whole community is working together to create and refine this resource - as the future unfolds."
The Penn State Portal is a service of Information Technology Services (ITS) at Penn State. More information is found via the Penn State Portal Project Web site at: http://www.psu.edu/portalproject/ or go directly to: https://portal.psu.edu/