Beginning on June 4, the MyLeo portal will have a new, more user-friendly face.
In response to student expressions for updated virtual communication system, the portal team has been working to “assure [students] that their voices are heard,” according to Vice President for Student Access and Success Dr. Mary Hendrix.
Abimortgage.com describes a portal as “a service that offers a broad array of resources and services.”
Assistant Director of Market and New Media and portal team member Lisa Martinez described it more as a tunnel where students use only the tools given. “We’re able to see what works and what doesn’t work in the current portal. We’re able to provide feedback from all the students to make sure that the tools and resources that are in their own tunnel and portal are the ones they have asked for.”
The new portal will have customized pages for various users including staff, students, and alumni. They will each have different pages specified for their needs. For instance, the alumni page will contain listings of alumni events while students will have more campus events listed.
A gmail platform will also be incorporate in the new portal. It will be launched and ready for use earlier in order to allow to students to become familiar with it. Martinez said that the e-mail will be available on the current portal starting May 14.
There will be a team of bloggers which includes faculty, alumni, student, and staff representation informing all users about the updates of the portal. They will be blogging until the new portal is launched and a month after “to give the target audience some insight that [the representatives] retrieve from meetings,” Martinez said, including screenshots and new information.
A different aspect of the new portal from the old is that the messaging will be filtered into three categories in order of importance. Included in the first priority messages will be IRIS alerts, other emergencies, and deadlines. Second will be most anything academic-based dealing with financial aid and registration status. Third in line will be campus related news events.
“One of the largest concerns from students [now] is that they just can’t filter out anything from their e-mail.” Martinez said. “They just kept getting hit with more solicitation than important information.”
Once the portal is launched, students will no longer be receiving e-mails about campus events. However, notifications for the events will be displayed on the MyLeo dashboard along with the other messages. Also on the dashboard will be features such as an academic calendar and a student poll.
Martinez said that the portal project is independent from the new update with DegreeWorks, the newest alteration on the MyLeo homepage offering an improved advising system. “It happened that both projects were on track at the same time.”
The portal project has been in the works since October of last year with the process of gathering concepts and information along with week-long meetings. A time slot of a little over a year was spent putting together DegreeWorks.
Even after the new gmail is activated, Martinez said the old e-mail will still be available to view for a while in order to avoid loss of important information. It will give students the chance to clean it out if necessary.
Another new feature in the portal will be “MyLeo Communities” where students can create a community similar to a Facebook group. Martinez said it could be used for project groups.
All of the work taking place right now to get the website to perfection will come together on June 3 for the “testing day.” Martinez said a group of representatives will be in a room from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. going through every piece of the portal. “There will be representatives of undergraduate students, international students, graduate students, alumni, faculty, and staff to go through their custom portals,” Martinez said.