Administrative and Instructional Portals

• 09/01/02

Ways to serve the educational community better through the use of technology have increased. This is also true in government and industry, where the need for efficiency is apparent. At the Society for Applied Learning Technology's (SALT) Education Technology 2002 Conference in July, the commonality of educators was noticeable in the subject areas that the organization focused on. This year's topics included "E-Learning in Education and Industry," "Knowledge Management" and "Technical Skills Training."

Waiting for Education's Revolution

E-learning's future in education seems assured in both education and training, which is indicated in the chart below from research firm brandon-hall.com. In the SALT Conference keynote address Dr. Alan B. Salisbury, chairman of Avilar Technologies Inc., said we are still in an evolutionary mode and the revolution in education has not yet occurred. He also said that many learning issues need to be studied and resolved, including skill completion rates, time allocation, faculty acceptance and availability, domain applicability, and a special emphasis on quality.

Other notable information from the SALT Conference included:

What Are Portals?

The Army's new education initiative, eArmyU (www.earmyu.com), has been in operation since January 2001. The university is an asynchronous e-learning project that offers a flexible degree program using technology anytime, anywhere. Currently, a consortium of 23 schools provides course materials for the online university. More than 80 certificate and degree programs are available to more than 72,000 students. The program is scheduled to expand to additional sites, serving about 100,000 students within four years, pending approval. Though 50 percent of Army students are new to higher education, as of February 2002 more than 10,000 courses were completed and about 5,000 courses were in progress at eArmyU. The heart of the university is a portal that contains e-learning services, such as high-quality degree and certificate programs; administrative support services, including registration, textbook distribution and announcements; and personal information.

"Portal" has been a buzzword for a few years. At the most basic level, portals assemble a variety of useful information into a one-stop Web page, bringing about greater efficiency. Portals are also entry points to a variety of resources, such as e-mail, financial records, schedules and announcements. They allow administrative and instructional information to be found in one place to serve a community, such as a university or other educational institution, so users don't have to deal with dozens of different Web interfaces. Portals consist of a number of information channels, including:

Well-developed portals make it easier for the user to find information. This could include academic, administrative and social information, such as registration materials, campus activities, community opportunities, test results and assignments. Students' records should be easily accessible in one place throughout their college years, as well as when they become alumni. In addition, generic entry-level portals, such as Netscape and Yahoo!, are used extensively worldwide.

Operational Portals

Building a portal presents challenges in providing the right content and overcoming the politics and feeling of ownership. Many departments have their own Web pages and feel they own the information under their control - the data may belong to the office of the registrar, the department of human resources, the library, etc. A portal should be dynamic, using data from a variety of sources; it cannot just be another Web page with links. Information is too frequently stored in different and incompatible databases without cross-references, and the departments that own databases frequently have difficulty relinquishing control.

However, many successful portals are currently in operation. The federal government is supposed to launch an e-training portal that will allow about 2 million employees to access information and technology courses from their homes or offices. As part of the Electronic Government Act, which provides $345 million over four years, federal employees will be provided one online location to take courses, perform skill assessments and receive reports on their progress. This portal, located online at www.golearn.gov, was available in July 2002, and lets government agencies share reports concerning issues such as employee course registration, progress and future needs. A few of the other portals that are in operation or being developed include:

Conclusion

Educational institutions are populated by individuals with common interests and their need to share information. The challenge is to integrate resources, information, reports, etc., which may be in a number of places, and IT systems already in place, so that they appear seamless to the user. This can be done by building a portal, which takes a great deal of time and money to do properly; using source code developed by others; or obtaining the recommended portal software. However, the portal should avoid redundancy and result in greater efficiency. Politics in the institution also plays a large role.

This article originally appeared in the 09/01/2002 issue of THE Journal.