OIT unveils student portal

The Office of Information Technology today launched DukePass, a pilot web portal that allows undergraduates secure and easy access to a range of student-oriented information resources and online applications.

Those involved in the development of the pilot will assess its effectiveness through April, and the Academic Support Technology Executive Committee will decide by the end of May whether to continue the portal's development in the fall.

"DukePass is an exciting opportunity for us to deliver information and services to students in a convenient, effective and appealing manner," said Deb Johnson, assistant vice provost and director of Student Administrative Services, in a statement. "The portal is the first initiative, and perhaps a defining one, in our plans to organize and deliver services to students in more efficient, effective and customer-friendly ways that will enhance their overall Duke experience."

The DukePass main page offers a number of features, including University announcements, personal reminders and bookmarks, e-mail and Chronicle news. Users can customize DukePass to their personal preferences, choosing everything from which "channels" they want displayed to the site's color scheme.

A similar portal site--owned by the Duke Student Publishing Company, which also owns The Chronicle and The Chronicle Online--was launched in late September after DevilNet merged with MyDuke.com. One of the main differences between the two portals, however, is in DukePass's elimination of multiple logins to some of the University's most commonly used sites. With DukePass, a one-time login with Duke Net ID and password gives access to various restricted sites like ACES and Blackboard, all from a centralized location.

"The portal streamlines communication from administrative resources to students, and I find the inclusion of news and the malleability of all the features on the portal extremely attractive," said Jonathan Bigelow, president of Duke University Union and a member of the student-led team that helped determine the portal's content. "This portal is a step in the right direction for what Duke's undergraduate population should be offered in terms of administrative online services.

Ginny Cake, director of Information Technology, said the decision to further develop the DukePass pilot will depend upon student input--a policy in keeping with the three-month development of the program on the whole. "This is the first project I've been on that has been a full collaboration between students, staff and faculty members on the development team," she said.

Feedback about the portal will be gathered using online surveys, comments from faculty and staff and information from student focus groups.

Bigelow stressed that DukePass is a work in progress, with some features that may not be fully developed and others that may be missing altogether. "We recognize that the process should be iterative rather than a shot in the dark with a complete project that misses the mark," he said. "In the future, students will have a much more intuitive method for tapping [into] all online resources at Duke."

Elizabeth Dixon, Duke Student Government vice president for student affairs and a member of the DukePass content team, said that although the portal does not include all the features she would eventually like it to include, it offers a number of opportunities for expansion and customization.

"The future holds the possibility of having bursar statements online, as well as FLEX accounts and academic information that is constantly updated," she said.

Dixon added that she would eventually like to see more "fun," individualized features--features that could induce students to make the portal their homepage. "In terms of features not pertaining to academic or services components, I think that's something that will increase," she said. "For example, right now my homepage has the TV lineup for the day on Duke cable, movie times and things like comics and the horoscope. That's the sort of content I'm talking about."

Brandon Shapiro, president of DevilNet and a member of the DukePass content team, said another feature that could encourage students to use DukePass as their homepage was for the address--dukepass.duke.edu--to go to a default page with links that do not require a NetID sign-in. He noted that a number of universities with portal sites have just such a default page, which allows people not associated with the university to access some useful information.

Although there are a number of differences between DukePass and DevilNet, Shapiro wondered if the two sites would have to be further differentiated in order for DevilNet to survive. For the time being, DevilNet will keep running alongside DukePass, Shapiro said.

Although DukePass is not currently available to graduate students, members of the Graduate and Professional Student Council were involved in its development, and a portal for graduate and professional students is likely if the undergraduate pilot is successful. Rob Saunders, GPSC president and a member of the DukePass content team, said a portal for graduate and professional students could go a long way in increasing communication across the University.

"There are a lot of little features that, taken separately, may not drastically change the way we communicate at Duke. But taken as a whole, they could start us on a path to easier communication," Saunders said. "Graduate students aren't unique at Duke in the fact that there are not a lot of ways to communicate with each other. Duke has a lot of services to make life easier, but no one knows about them."