For faculty

Basic features, plus:

Be dependable

  • It just works. And I don’t need a manual.

Be intuitive

  • Easily create and publish content (text, images, some multimedia) about own courses, programs, scholarship, and research for public interest.
  • Mostly a do-it-yourselfer. Not afraid of technology but doesn’t have time to be an expert. Aware of possibilities, doesn’t have time or inclination to develop technology expertise).
  • Creates own site, with a distinct look (colors and layout) which are separate from departmental bio, with personal information, CV, research, links to related sites.
  • Easily move documents (text, spreadsheet, presentations) into single online environment.

Be useful

  • Create outreach materials for sharing scholarship, research, and events with general public who are not necessarily going to look for information in journals (or at that level).
  • Automatically link course syllabi and descriptions to faculty and department pages.
  • Easily add classification and tags to improve findability.
  • Easy way to schedule interviews (use the same kind of a familiar process as scheduling events).

Be engaging

  • Flexible interface choices that allow distinctiveness
  • Publish audio, video, and image galleries, especially for lectures and performances.
  • Provide personal guidelines for submission of portfolios, recordings, videos.

Be personable

  • Live streaming of public events.
  • Share restricted documents with colleagues.

Be welcoming

  • Create extra-curricular spaces for collaboration with students and off-campus partners.
  • Find out what other faculty members are doing.

Be meaningful

  • Capture annotated reviews of online resources that benefit others.

In addition, for academic leaders:

Be intuitive

  • Make it incredibly simple to add professional activities, like publications and presentations.
  • Organize content within an academic time line/journeys — one path for faculty, another for students.

Be useful

  • Provide online experience of programs so future students and employees don’t have to contact faculty directly for basic, repetitive information.
  • Allow private messaging for inquiries from future students and employees that can be vetted by departmental assistants, rather direct access via e-mail.

Be engaging

  • Organize content around big ideas: the organizing principles that connect learning across boundaries.
  • Present academic programs, projects, and initiatives to constituents in a dynamic, rigorous, accurate, current, immersive, and engaging style.

Be personable

  • Facilitate student, faculty, staff, and alumni portfolios which can be aggregated on departmental subsites.

Be welcoming

  • Tell stories about the many facets of a learning community: intellectual work, community collaboration, real-world service. Increase use of the personal voice.
  • Bring together content related to realms — such as the arts, social sciences, natural sciences — into focused gateways.
  • Place academic programs in geographic relationships.
  • Clearly indicate which events are open to the general public, and promote related future events.

Be meaningful

  • Present the excitement of exploring, discovering, and creating new knowledge created by faculty, students, and staff alongside curricula, events, and co-curricular activities.
  • Make that new knowledge easily found and built upon.

In addition, for department chairs (American Council on Education: Roles and Responsibiliities of Department Chairs):

  • Easily communicate mission, curriculum and program development with faculty, students, and external publics.
  • Document faculty, staff, and alumni accomplishments for departmental outreach, with as little effort as possible.
  • Report periodically on department mission and activities; i.e., quarterly reports.
  • Easily configure restricted collaboration spaces for departmental communications, between department members and off-campus collaborators.
  • Find out what other departments are doing.
  • Promote sponsored speakers, stream video and audio of presentations.

In addition, for off-campus colleagues:

  • Faculty partners, affiliated with other colleges and universities, can work together in collaboration spaces with same range of functionality as “local” faculty
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