Management, E-Commerce, & Applications Track (MEA)

MEA1: Developing an Application Development Framework for Your IT Group

Gretel Van Lente Miller, Michigan State University

"What!? I can't just do my own thing?" How does an organization personalize a software engineering methodology to fit an IT department and get people to use it? Michigan State University's central IT group employs about 50 programmer/analysts to create institution-wide systems. A software development process was needed to create computer systems that are designed well, based on understood requirements, and have maintainable code and even documentation. Hear about our journey to understanding our development environment and language, and learn how we developed a process palatable to developers and managers alike. Solid software engineering principles will also be discussed.

This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 9:45 AM to 10:45 AM.

MEA2: Content in Motion Equals Content in Action

Robert Michael Murray, Georgetown University

Piet Niederhausen, Georgetown University

Blogs, RSS feeds, instant messaging, mobile technologies, and social networking are all changing the way people interact with content. Whether it's sharing a photo stream with friends or receiving a text message about the latest concert news, users of these technologies are increasingly expecting that content moves with them as they navigate their lives both online and off. These trends present great promise for higher education; however, a university Web site can no longer just be a collection of departmental links, locked content repositories, or disconnected experiences. Content from across a university—from text to images to audio and video—must flow naturally into Web pages, RSS feeds, and other media where it is put into action. Georgetown University is working to liberate content from static Web pages in order to improve and develop a richer experience for the members and visitors of our community. Creating a Web presence that is seamless and natural requires a sophisticated infrastructure. ExploreGeorgetown is a project to create the next generation of university Internet communications. This session will talk about the technologies, approaches, and strategies that we have adopted in putting our content in motion. We will cover the challenges confronted in shifting to a collaborative content management environment and expanding the content production perspective beyond the page, plus the benefits gained by content producers in liberating content at a granular level.

This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM.

MEA3: Web Accessibility Evaluation: Techniques, Tips, and Tools Used by Michigan State University

Justin Thorp, Michigan State University

Over the last five years, Michigan State University has really gotten behind making their Web sites as accessible as possible. During that time we have worked at putting together a checklist of best practices or guidelines that we can give to Web developers to help them know how to make their Web pages accessible. In order to meet our goals and guidelines we also have become accustomed to using a certain set of techniques, tricks, and tools to evaluate our pages to make sure that they meet and adhere to our expectations. There are a variety of free to paid tools and resources that we use on a day-to day-basis to make sure that we make our Web sites as accessible as they possibly can be.

This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 1:15 PM to 2:15 PM.

MEA4: Web Team Success in the Campus Environment

Jenny Johnson Wolf, Indiana University Southeast

Dealing with deans, directors, faculty members, vice chancellors, and staffers is a daily challenge for a Web team. Getting all these stakeholders to agree on a Web site design is a near impossible task. Helping them understand why inaccessible content is unacceptable can take you all day. Pushing for consistent information architecture between departments can quickly turn a Web designer into a moderator. Toss in accessibility requirements and branding guidelines, and you often end up delivering a product that your customer (the dean, director, faculty member, or vice chancellor) never envisioned and doesn't like. Customer interaction can make or break any Web project. This presentation walks you through how to manage customer expectations, create customer-friendly timelines, and ensure that you (the campus Web experts) influence how the Web pages look and function. If you follow this customer-focused method to Web development projects, customers will thank you for a job well done.

This session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, from 2:45 PM to 3:45 PM.

MEA5: URSecurePay: An ITS eCommerce Service at the University of Rochester

Holly Colf, University of Rochester

The presentation will cover the triumphs and tribulations of the creation and implementation of an eCommerce solution at the University of Rochester. We will discuss the URSecurePay pilot projects, what worked well, and what could have gone better. We will share our lessons learned along the way, and discuss where we hope to take the product in the future. We also plan to hold a poster session to share technical architecture of URSecurePay with interested parties.

This session is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 8, from 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM.

MEA6: Acquiring and Implementing Enterprise-wide Technology

Anne Spray Kinney, Government Finance Officers Association

This session presents best practices, lessons learned, and case studies from the research and consulting experience of GFOA (Government Finance Officers Association) staff in the public ERP industry (financial, human resource, and student service software systems). Included in this two-hour seminar will be information about GFOA work with small and large governments and education institutions that have planned and installed enterprise-wide software systems. We will discuss how to understand and make the business case for campus-wide administrative planning, strategies for addressing organizational and cultural issues across an institution, and proven techniques to optimize enterprise software acquisition and mitigate the risk of implementation failure. The presentation will cover needs assessment methods, ROI/TCO analysis, RFP/business requirement definition, system selection steps and proposal evaluations, contract negotiation tips and traps, system rollout options (e.g., Big Bang vs. Phased), project management and staffing, implementation methods, best practices and process redesign, change management strategies, technology architecture choices, and post-"go live" optimization.

This session is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 8, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM.

MEA7: Give the Teacher an Apple: Integrating Podcasting into Your Institution's Web Site

Brett Essler, Buffalo State College

Paul Kruczynski, Buffalo State College

With a 65 percent market share, Apple's iPod dominates the portable digital music market and is a bona fide pop culture phenomenon. But it's more than just a status symbol. iPods and other MP3 players have spawned applications of great value to academic institutions, most notably podcasting. Buffalo State College's recently launched podcasting initiative aims to use emerging technology to help improve campus communication and foster a stronger sense of community. By obtaining buy-in across campus, identifying and gathering strong content, integrating podcasts into existing core applications, and presenting them in an accessible and navigable user interface, podcasting has the potential to excite and engage your campus community.

This session is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 8, from 1:15 PM to 2:15 PM.

MEA8: Not Your Grandma's Web Site Anymore: Responsibilities, Tools, and Systems That Make Up Today's College Web Sites

Steven Lewis, SUNY Brockport

College Web sites today can be split into at least five components: marketing pages, business process services, course delivery systems, general purpose utilities, and personal Web pages. These core components may use different front-end tools to deliver information and services to college constituencies. They may be supported by different back-end products that assist in the everyday running of the institution. They require different job skills to develop, maintain, support, and update each of these components. The overall success of your college's Web endeavors may be determined by how effectively your components work together. This presentation maps several institutional models onto this framework. The goals of this presentation are to give Web professionals at all institutions new tools to model their job responsibilities, to identify institutional needs, to explore where critical linkages lie, and to help promote greater collaboration among the components at their institutions.

This session is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 8, from 2:45 PM to 3:45 PM.