Student To-Do List RSS Feed
Matthew Winkel
The College of New Jersey | Milliseconds: A Blog for Web Usability Professionals
Overview
Higher education portals can offer targeted collections of links for students, faculty & staff, parents, visitors, and alumni. Most users start their portal experience with a time sensitive task to accomplish. An obvious important task in higher education is registering for courses. Students should not be expected to navigate by topic to “Academics” link and then to “Course Registration System.” Instead, a clear link labeled “Register for Courses” should be one click away during the registration period. A time sensitive navigation scheme organized by task can offer one click access to important resources throughout the semester.
The College of New Jersey provides an automated “To-Do List” on the “Resources for Students” page which enables our students to quickly navigate to clearly labeled tasks to accomplish (e.g. Calculate your GPA, Visit bookstore for buyback, Apply for federal Pin to complete FAFSA, Pay next student bill by Dec. 14). The “To-Do List” could be targeted to even more specific audiences and even personalized with current portal technology.
Highlights
The “To-Do List” navigation concept is fairly simple. Instead of just providing permanent links to a web page of resources organized by topic (e.g. Academics) or an office home page (e.g. Information Technology), we can offer links directly to pages within our site so users can accomplish time sensitive tasks.
At the College of New Jersey, the inspiration for this navigation scheme came from analyzing search and web logs. Popular search terms could easily be tied to distinctive times during the semester. For example, our users searched for the Bookstore and Residence Hall Opening and Closing Schedule at the beginning and end of each semester. They searched for advising and registration information during the middle of the semester. Finally, the GPA Calculator was the most popular search term at end of the semester.
These items were entered into to simple database driven web application that includes fields for: title, link, start date and end date. The College of New Jersey uses this same system to manage news and events and RSS feeds.
Next Steps
Web-based applications are becoming easier to plug into higher education portals thanks open standards. This increase task-based content will require adaptive approaches to portal navigation and information architecture that focus on usability. An effective higher education portal will guide each user to complete specific tasks required to support the education process. Combining audience and task navigation with a “To-Do List” is an effective way to highlight navigation to important tasks that correspond with the academic calendar year. The “To-Do List” may be targeted to even more specific audiences and even personalized with current portal technology. A college senior could see items required for graduation or a new faculty member could view items required at specific times in the tenure process. Portal users could even add their own items and check off completed items on these personalized lists which they can then download to other browser based personal organizers and RSS aggregators.