Welcome to Provosts on Portals!

Thank you for joining us for a just-in-time learning experience on campus portals.  Twice a week, on Mondays and Thursday, you will receive a short e-mail with a link to a web page of materials.   Each page will include a brief explanation of the concepts covered and links to additional information on that topic.

The campus portal is a hot topic on many college and university campuses. While still in an evolutionary state, campus portals provide a new interface between colleges and constituent groups, provide new mechanisms to organize campuses, and offer the promise of new ways to create communities of learners.

Provosts on Portals is a pilot project, a work in progress.  Your feedback, interests and suggestions will help to shape this project and its direction.  This project is designed to be asynchronous; the materials will be accessible throughout the fall semester.

Chief academic officers often work collaboratively with others.  You are free to share these materials with anyone on your campus who may assist you in portal decisions.  However, because this pilot project was created exclusively for AASCU institutions, we ask you to not share this information beyond your own institution.  As a participant in this project you are involved with 118 of your colleagues, chief academic officers at AASCU institutions.  

Today we present an introduction to the concept of campus portals: definitions, some sample sites, and an article which summarizes some key points about portals.  The term "campus portals" is used loosely right now, so let me begin by providing a working definition.  A campus portal is a single integrated point for useful and comprehensive access to information, people, and processes.  While portals have a rapidly evolving set of features and characteristics, they can be described as both personalized and customized user interfaces providing users with access to both internal and external information.  Campus portals differ from university home pages.  Home pages are static and the same for everyone who goes to that site.  A campus portal, on the other hand, varies according to who looks at it and the information provided to it.  It changes for each viewer and  is dynamic, not static.  

We present this material on a page entitled "What's a portal?" You can access this material at http://weber.edu/portals/What.htm  (If the previous URL was highlighted, you should be able to click on it to start your browser.  You can also access the material by copying the web address into your browser.)  

When time permits please send your thoughts, questions, ideas, or potential topics on this subject to portals@weber.edu.  We are pleased that you have joined us in this activity, and look forward to your feedback and reactions.