Campus portals: come to higher education: these everything-in-one-place web sites can streamline administrative and student services and could save institutions money

Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education, June, 2001 by Robert Moskowitz

When you hear the word "portal" you might immediately think of one of the many commercial Web sites, such as Yahoo or Excite, that populate the Internet today. As the term implies, these services are the gateway to the Internet for many people, offering news, search functions, sports scores, shopping and movie reviews.

A campus portal, on the other hand, is the entry point for a college or university. It provides a centralized source of information and services for students, prospective students, faculty, suppliers, administrators, alumni and friends.

The term campus portal can mean anything from a relatively simple set of Web-based calendar and e-mail services, to a comprehensive online interface offering highly personalized and customizable access to nearly all the features and benefits of campus life and work.

Campus portals can provide entry points to anything from e-shopping for books and campus regalia, to Web access, student activity information, class resources, syllabi and assignment listings, and homework submission, as well as online class registration and tuition payment.

Because the campus portal is accessible to any Web-enabled computer, it's a powerful tool for pulling together a far-flung university community. Students studying abroad can remain in touch with friends, professors, activities and services at the main campus as though they'd never left. The portal allows alumni and friends to participate in campus life--at least to the extent it is enabled via the Web.

A Relatively New Concept

Campus portals were pioneered by UCLA in 1999, to be followed by similar systems at the University of Washington and the University of Buffalo. Advancements in software simplify the work involved in building comprehensive portals from scratch. As a result, most schools can launch a pilot portal within 12 months. Expansion and roll out takes longer, however, and a continually evolving portal is an unending process.

Only about 5 percent of universities currently have campus portals, but many other are on the way. Some 80 percent of U.S. colleges with enrollments of more than 1,000 will have campus portals by 2005, predicts the Connecticut-based Gartner Group.

"They will become as essential to the campus experience as the quad," predicts Matthew Pittinsky, chairman of Blackboard Inc., the Washington, D.C.-based vendor of enterprise software for about 1,400 universities and schools.

"Portals are on everyone's mind right now, both within the university and externally," agrees Dirk Herr-Hoyman, project manager at the University of Wisconsin's Department of Information Technology, in Madison, Wisc. "In not too many years, every university will have a personalized portal system."

Most campus portals are well received. At Pepperdine, for example, more than 60 percent of faculty elected to use the portal's online grade-input system the first time it was made available. Where Pepperdine once dedicated a full-time employee for nearly two weeks to process grading forms, today faculty members can enter students' grades into the system without any staff support. And since more than 70 percent of Pepperdine students study abroad at some point in their college career, the portal keeps them in touch with the home campus. After just one year, roughly half the students regularly use Pepperdine Express to look at their grades, check payments and more.

Targeted Services

"A portal gives the ability to serve our constituents better, giving them what they need without the things they don't need," says Dan Kelo, manager, special project development, information resources at Pepperdine. "As Web sites grow, they become difficult to navigate. Our campus portal allows us to target services to our constituents."

Herr-Hoyman agrees: "The benefits will be in keeping and attracting world-class students and faculty," he says. "That's important to us as a university. We're not cutting staff or expenses; we're trying to do more with the budgets we already have by providing better services."

Personalization for Each Visitor

True campus portals individually identify each visitor the moment he or she signs in, and customizes the information and services presented. A student can add a varsity basketball schedule to the system's calendar, display a class schedule or select the student activities that interest him.

A well-planned campus portal also provides a broad range of information and services. Campus services commonly seen on campus portals include:

* Course Capabilities. Links to class sites, announcements about courses, a grade book entry system for faculty and a grade book display for students, and the ability to turn in assignments online.

* Campus Life Services. Services to learn about campus events, locate a friend's dorm or apartment, buy or sell books online, pay for season tickets or gym memberships, or sign up for trips and activities. Portals also link to student newspapers and other campus media sites.

* Administrative Services. Basic tasks of campus life, such as course registration, paying tuition and fees, making health center appointments or signing up for counseling.