September 18, 2013 by Midwestern State University

8 | Sept.18, 2013 |

Online portal debuts to mixed review ETHAN METCALF REPORTER

he online portal system that launched last May has met with mixed reviews as a larger number of students began using it this fall, putting the new system through an unofficial stress test. Criminal justice senior Cynthia Ramirez said her main concern with the portal is adjusting to the constant changes to the service. “I get frustrated anytime I use it,” Ramirez said. “They’re constantly changing it and by the time they get it back up, you have to relearn it.” Ramirez said it was especially frustrating for her because all of her classes this semester are online, but she said she does like being able to access Desire2Learn from the portal. “It’s a little bit convenient, but the inconvenience is learning it,” Ramirez said. Technology Analyst Robert Steflik said he was put in charge of imCYNTHIA RAMIREZ SENIOR CRIMINAL JUSTICE plementing and maintaining the portal system at the beginning of last year. “They started approaching me saying, hey, we’ve decided that we’ve got this grant money that’s going to be used to get this portal off the ground and we’d like to have you oversee it,” Steflik said. In a Wichitan article published last spring, Launch date confirmed for new, effective portal system, Robert Clark, vice president of administration and institutional effectiveness, said university officials signed a five-year contract with CampusEAI,

“They’re constantly changing it and by the time they get it back up, you have to relearn it.”

the company that offers the myCampus portal service to universities. “In the first and second year the cost is $29,500 and in the third through fifth year the cost is going to be $20,000,” Clark said. Steflik said the portal will offer many services to students and faculty, but he is preoccupied with making sure students can access the new portal. “Right now our pressing issues have been getting all the students logged in successfully,” Steflik said, “and just a couple of days ago we finally got the ability to change and reset their passwords because initially it was their mustangs ID.” Steflik said some students who were concerned that their Mustang ID password was not secure enough contacted him, but Steflik and his department were cautious in implementing the password change feature. “We were hesitant to turn it on because we were having so many issues with people just trying to figure out their usernames,” Steflik said. “Now everybody’s changing their passwords and the instructions were kind of cumbersome.” Steflik said he is unable to make the password-changing process any easier because it is a service provided by Microsoft, not by his own department located in the Memorial building. “We’re kind of limited in how much we can customize it and how we can make it work, but I’m pretty happy because we turned it on two days ago and I’ve only had one student that has called me,” Steflik said. “Their issue was with the security questions.” For students to create their own password, they must answer three security questions which are set by Microsoft. “One of the questions was my favorite color and they tried to put in red, but it’s got to be four letters

or longer,” Steflik said. “So they wanted to know if we could have different [questions], but that’s a Microsoft thing. That’s their three questions that they ask.” Steflik said instead of actually answering those questions, pick the same word for each security question, such as butterscotch. This will make it easier for students to remember, and harder for any would-be hackers to access an account belonging to someone else. “No matter what the question is, the answer is butterscotch,” Steflik said. “So any hacker won’t be able to get to it because it’s just going to be some crazy answer.” Biology graduate student Sahithya Gollanapalli said her previous university in India had a similar system to the myCampus service, but it offered an SMS alert system that she feels is missing from Midwestern’s portal. “It would be nice if there were some text alerts,” GollanaROBERT STEFLIK palli said. “More students would TECHNOLOGY ANALYST go to events because everybody checks their phone.” Steflik said students will see solutions to their problems sooner if they fill out a support ticket, which immediately appears in Steflik’s inbox. “Nine times out of 10 when something breaks, people usually don’t even say anything about it,” Steflik said. “As soon as we hear that there’s anything broke, we immediately jump in there and start trying to fix it. We need to encourage the students to communicate back to us.”

“As soon as we hear that there’s anything broke, we immediately jump in there and start trying to fix it.”

P O R TA L F E AT U R E S Message Boards — Accompanying Wikis as myCampus provided tools for group collaboration, message boards allow for conversations within departments and teams that rely on shared ideas and real-time feedback. Targeted Alerts — Broadcast messages to individual user groups or an entire institution using the myCampus Targeted Alert system. Individual courses can be notified of an instructor’s upcoming absence, and an entire campus can be kept safe through emergency alerts during inclimate weather or other hazardous conditions.

Mobile Phone — MyCampus extends the reach of education by providing direct access from any mobile smartphone device. This power of mobility allows users such as students and faculty members to provide and receive learning and presentation content anytime and anywhere. Instant Messenger — Social media allows people to stay connected. While social networking with classmates, faculty, and the student body of a university are already provided within the portal, myCampus takes users’ online social lives one step further by allowing them to integrate chats and contacts from their non-university communication devices.

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Web Content Management — The myCampus portal system enables and supports authorizing, publishing, approving, and organizing content for the web. Users can utilize the portal’s powerful template system to define and present their materials, including photos, documents and blogs. Through this template system, content can be individually marked for searches, categories, tags, and filters to organize information for users, search engines and website designers. SOURCE: MSU Portal News, http://www.mwsu.edu/portal/features.htm

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