Showcases
These 30-minute "showcase" presentations offer an opportunity to show successful development and implementation, significant work in progress, or research findings in an interactive and graphical format.
SHO1: Building An Online Database For The Naval Academy Using PHP and MySQL
Lou Cox, U.S. Naval Academy
The U.S. Naval Academy maintains an online collection of LEAD program master's theses. The collection began small and was originally put online using static Web pages. As more theses were added to the collection, this format started to become unmanageable. To address this difficulty, the academy's Office of Institutional Research decided to house the theses in an online database. For its implementation, an open-standard, mid-level application using PHP and MySQL was chosen. This presentation will address the original problem along with the development and implementation of the solution.
This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
SHO2: Editing Printed Content for the Web: How to Make It Work
Suzanne Wayne, Smeal College of Business at Penn State
Much of the vast amount of information that exists in print will inevitably make its way onto the Web, although as Web professionals we might wish otherwise. In this showcase, we will review some common mistakes that come from this practice, and some ideas on how to do this successfully. Much of this will be discussed in greater detail in the hands-on workshop, "Writing and Editing for the Web," offered Wednesday, November 9, as part of this conference.
This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
SHO3: Economical Alumni Online Communities
Jeff Snow, Keuka College
At Keuka College, we were tasked with developing an online virtual community for our alumni. With no budget, the solution was to look to open-source programs. We found WebAPP, a powerful content management system written entirely in Perl. It is one of the very few portal systems to use a flat file text database system, which makes it very easy to maintain and edit. With a little or no Perl knowledge, you can customize this software for your institution and provide an exceptional online community with the same abilities as systems costing $10,000 or more.
This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
SHO4: How to Effectively Notify Students of Class Cancellations
Bob Reynolds, Monroe Community College
This session will demonstrate how Monroe Community College has solved a problem that is common to many college campuses—how to effectively communicate class cancellations to students prior to their arriving at class. Through the use of the Web, e-mail, database technology, and an interactive text-to-voice application, students are notified of cancellations through several different means. Students receive immediate e-mail notification with detailed class information. Information is also available through our Web site, MCC's on-campus digital signage network, and an interactive phone application. In addition, reporting a cancellation by a member of the faculty is done through a simple Web form that takes only minutes to enter. Faculty can easily enter information from home or anywhere they have Internet access. A management process has been built in to notify the appropriate department chairperson when a cancellation has been created. It also provides a way for academic administrators to track cancellation information. This system has been well received by faculty and has greatly benefited the students.
This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
SHO5: Making Do When the Web "Team" Is You
Stephanie Leary, Texas A&M University System
This presentation will cover a wide range of time-saving applications, resources, strategies, and design methods to help solo Web developers become as efficient as possible. These methods can be used to maintain even large sites and still leave time for accessibility, user testing, site planning, and other things managers often consider optional. As part of the last half of the presentation, members of the audience will be asked to offer their tips and tricks for fellow one-man web "teams."
This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
SHO6: Software Development Idioms in Practice
Matthew O'Connor, Indiana University
An idiom reduces a complex idea into a succinct phrase that is separate from the idea itself. Similarly, software idioms capture complex ideas in code or business logic into small libraries that are loosely coupled to the overall project. Idiomatic design principals were applied extensively in the Indiana University Knowledge Base. Lightweight libraries abstracted complex interactions with the software into single "methods" that were not externally dependent on the Knowledge Base's API. For example, actions like searching the Knowledge Base became a single method that required no setup. These idiomatic libraries provided a high-level API to the Knowledge Base. The interface to the libraries does not require custom data structures or non-idiomatic API methods, which allowed the libraries to be safely used in other software projects. The idiomatic libraries formed a layer over top of the Knowledge Base API and also served as a foundation for offering SOAP, REST, and XML-RPC in our Web services architecture.
This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 4:45 PM to 5:15 PM.
SHO7: Post Comments Here: Blogging through a Redesign
Jerry Dannemiller, The Ohio State University
Blogs are everywhere, which is great and all, but can they can also be your unit's best friend if you're entering into the long, thorny, and political world of a Web site redesign. At Ohio State, the New Media Unit used a blog as a means to post every aspect of the redesign effort, publicly airing sketches, content decisions, meeting schedules, timelines, and more. It quickly became an invaluable tool whereby all audiences across the nation's largest campus could become invested in the redesign process, air their gripes, and in the long run, take ownership. Everyone from first-year students to deans and vice presidents posted comments, leading to the creation of a (hopefully) better site. By the time of the site's launch (May 2005), no surprises were sprung, and the transition to a new homepage and system of second level pages was seamless and fully vetted.
This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 4:45 PM to 5:15 PM.
SHO8: The 5 W's (and an H) of Running a Portal
Patrick Collette, Genesee Community College
Mary Jane Heider, Genesee Community College
Genesee Community College has implemented SungardSCT's Luminis portal software as a key part of its administrative and instructional infrastructure. Reflecting on Who the portal is for, What it is used for, Where it fits into the institution's mission, When portals make sense, Why Genesee implemented a portal and How we're doing it, this session will tell you what has worked for Genesee. Additionally, the session will look at future plans for the portal.
This session is scheduled for Mon, Nov 7, from 4:45 PM to 5:15 PM.
SHO9: Growing a Web-App for Residence Hall Room Selection
David Robinson, Carthage College
Mike Kishline, Carthage College
Two years ago, Carthage College decided to try building a Web-based application to handle the annual room sign-up process for our 1,000+ returning residential students. The application accommodates complex scheduling rules concerning who can sign up when, handles the unique needs of our fraternities and sororities, and interfaces with our administrative computing system. After two reasonably successful rounds of room selection for returning students, we were asked to build an extension to handle incoming students, including scoring the degree of fit based on survey responses, and suggesting likely roommate matches.
This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 4:45 PM to 5:15 PM.
SHO10: People, Process, Politics: How to Build a Distributed Model for Web Site Management
Ann May Vandor
Are you ready for a redesign? Web pages may beg for renovation, but if stakeholder interests are splintered, progress on redesign stands still. Using the University of Washington Business School as an example, this session will examine low-cost ways to implement a functional model of Web site management. Topics include: getting stakeholder buy-in, empowering Web editors, building an effective Web team, defining a governance structure, and creating low/no-cost processes for content management, as well as for style and branding adherence.
This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 4:45 PM to 5:15 PM.
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