Poster Session

All poster sessions will be presented on Tuesday, Nov. 8, from 3:45 PM to 4:45 PM.

POS1: HighEdWeb: Who We Are II

Steven Lewis, SUNY Brockport

This is a follow-up to last year's poster session. Based on a survey of conference attendees, what can we determine about ourselves? Compared to our peers, does our college pay us well, given our experience, responsibilities, education, institution type, student population, site size, and other factors? What type of technologies do we generally use? How does our staffing differ from that of other institutions? How has the picture changed from last year?

POS2: Using the Web for SSH Authorization

John Wagner, Princeton University

This presentation covers a current project nearing completion. Our group has a need to replace Kerberos access to our servers. The cost to support the Kerberos infrastructure, along with our prosposed direction to move to WebISO, means Kerberos is on the way out. We tried a proxy server for access control, but it was unsatisfactory because we could not run X applications. We are working on an alternative solution that uses a Web sever to perform authentication (currently using RSA keys over SSL connections) to control access to the SSHD on the webserver host. The prototype is running and after the final few bugs are eliminated this will allow us to do secure authentication/authorization from anywhere on the net for controlled access to the local SSHD.

POS3: A User's Point of View: Mapping Mental Models

Charlynda Winkley, University of Buffalo

User-centered design methodologies use findings about user tasks and goals to drive the development and design of an interface. In order to determine the ongoing user needs that form the foundation of any Web project and ensure that the end product is usable, a number of research methods must be employed. In addition to conducting standard focus groups and individual user tests, Web teams can also interview users to determine their mental models: what types of information do users expect to find on a site, how do they expect to interact with it, even how they would label pieces of content. This poster will illustrate how Web professionals can use this information to plot actual user expectations against existing content, unearthing content gaps and creating a direction for the overall information architecture of a Web site.

POS4: Building a Web Site in WebGUI—An Open Source CMS

Fazia Rizvi, Texas State University-San Marcos

Jeffery Snider, Texas State University-San Marcos

When Southwest Texas State University changed its name to Texas State University-San Marcos, the Web team had quite a bit of work to do. We took the opportunity to migrate the main Web site into an open source content management system called WebGUI. We will talk about and demo our implementation of WebGUI and answer questions.

POS5: Gnosh: Building a Social Software Search Engine

Mike Richwalsky, Allegheny College

At Allegheny College, we have been building a social software search engine in collaboration with Vassar College and the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury College. Gnosh, as we've coined it, searches multiple sources, including Google, Yahoo, Flickr, del.icio.us, Feedster, Blogpulse, Amazon, and more. We've also added a social layer to the application, allowing users to create accouts, tag favorites, and find other users with similar interests and mark them as friends. The poster session will highlight potential academic uses and explain how to work with students as they contribute to, maintain, and document a large-scale Web application side-by-side with professional staff.

POS6: Custom-built Web Registration System

Rob Hornberger, Southwest Missouri State University

Brian Edmond, Southwest Missouri State University

Southwest Missouri State University recently implemented a custom-designed, Web-based registration system. It was designed to copy the policies and characteristics of the current in-person registration system, while adding the convenience of allowing students to register online. Because it was built internally, it effectively responds to the unique and specific needs of the SMSU registration system. The implementation was administered by a collaborative group of computer services, enrollment services, administrative, and other university personnel. This session will provide a demo of the system, discuss the administrative and development efforts, share feedback and statistical results, and preview the additional features planned for the future.

POS7: Usability for People with LD/ADHD: Looking Beyond Accessibility Guidelines

Julie Strothman, Landmark College

One can adhere faithfully to accessibility guidelines but still create poor usability experiences for individuals with learning disabilities. In this session, participants will develop an understanding of commonalities across cognitive disabilities. We will evaluate how our information display choices may exacerbate difficulties related to perception, literal interpretation, memory, and processing. Specifically, we will examine readability consequences related to content writing and display, page layout, form control choices, sequential procedures, and media alternatives. While we may not be content writers, we should be able to provide assistance with making text readable. We will answer obscure questions such as: Can access keys be offered elegantly? Why use Ruby code for colloquialisms? What's a good Flesch-Kincaid reading level for your text? To answer these questions, we will experiment with simple coding options, readability evaluation tools, and PDF accessibility options. We will seek out missed opportunities in our development procedures and play with free development tools to augment our testing.

POS8: From Idea to Roll-Out: Designing a Web Site

Michael DiMauro, University of Rochester

Designing a Web site can be daunting, but following a tested process can make creating a successful Web site a much easier proposition. Michael will detail his process developed over the last decade. Topics will cover everything from defining your goals to brainstorming to creating mock-ups to usability to building and testing your site and rolling it out. Michael will also discuss how to bring non-designers into the process, and how to get the user involved early.

POS9: Using the Web Effectively

Jean-Jacques Medastin, Clayton State University

The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate how the Web can be used to automate some of the tedious tasks that make teaching a nightmare at times, such as grading, taking roll, etc. Instructors can explore new ways to stimulate students by exposing them to innovative tools designed to facilitate their learning. This presentation will aim at motivating instructors to make their teaching experience fun and rewarding by reducing their non-teaching load.

POS10: Moving Online : One Program's Progress Towards an Online Format

Valerie Head, University at Buffalo School of Nursing

Offering courses online has become an important factor for expanding a school's geographic reach and attracting new students. However, adapting existing courses for online delivery can be a daunting task for all involved. This showcase will demonstrate how a clinical nurse specialist program within a university school of nursing has begun to establish an online learning community to better meet its students needs. The focus will be on how we have leveraged the features of our learning management system (LMS) combined with podcasting, video, and other multimedia, to create online courses that are flexible for both faculty and student use. Tools developed to prepare less tech-savvy students for the online format will also be shown. As this project is still a work in progress, our future plans will also be discussed.

POS11: Institutional Collaboration Toward an Instrument Atlas for DDS Students

Jennifer Bauer, University at Buffalo, School of Dental Medicine

An atlas of commonly used dental instruments was produced as one element of an expanding electronic curriculum. The atlas was conceived based on a collaborative process resulting in the implementation of student feedback. After developing a strategic plan, the University at Buffalo, School of Dental Medicine implemented an electronic curriculum in the fall of 2000. Since then, the school and campus have expanded the wireless network, and the school implemented an electronic clinic management system and established a digital media center to assist faculty in producing Web sites and instructional video to enhance pre-clinic and clinic instruction. The university has also implemented and expanded electronic course delivery tools, technology (including wireless) classrooms, online databases, and other resources through the libraries. An eCurriculum Faculty Advisory Committee was established and student academic advisory groups were formalized for each class facilitating student input. Input from these groups indicated the need for an atlas of commonly used dental instruments. The atlas, developed by the school's Digital Media Center (DMC) staff in Macromedia Flash with digital images, drew on the school's in-house resources including faculty, staff, and students. Through this collaborative process a tool for students was created.

POS12: URSecurePay: The Technology Behind our Solution

Holly Colf, University of Rochester

Kevin Hammon, University of Rochester

This poster session will serve as a follow-up to the "URSecurePay: an eCommerce Solution at the University of Rochester" presentation held earlier. We will discuss the technology supporting our solution with interested parties.

POS13: Your First RSS Feed

Lori Packer, University of Rochester

This poster provides step-by-step instructions for creating an RSS feed, either from scratch or from a mySQL database. Do you have news releases, an alumni magazine, an event calendar, or other regularly updated Web content? Why not make it available via RSS as well?

POS14: Connecting with Students through Course Resources

Erik Aulbach, University of Rochester

This session will talk about the Course Resources System we built at the University of Rochester's Rush Rhees Library. The system was built to connect librarians with students and faculty. With this system, students can go to the course page of their given class and quickly find materials the professor may have put on reserve for that class. They will also see other valuable resources that the librarian feels will help the student be successful in that class. This helps ease the need for the professor to spend valuable class time educating students about available and relevant library resources. With close to 1,000 classes each semester, creating a page for each class sounds rather daunting. This session will also show some of the technology used (ColdFusion) and how simple it is for the librarian to quickly create their own professional-looking class pages that are consistent with the look and feel of the rest of the library Web site—all without the need for any kind of HTML coding knowledge.

POS15: XML Library Catalogs

David Lindahl, University of Rochester

Usability studies have shown that library Web sites are often complex and difficult to navigate. Because of this, users flock to sites like Google, where it's easy to find relevant information. Users miss out on the high-quality content that is only available through their library. Most library Web sites have an embedded catalog, which is a search engine for books, journals, and other items. This catalog stores metadata in a format called MARC that was designed as a finding aid for books. Today's library is evolving with new types of content including online articles and streaming video. A new metadata format is needed to support current user needs while remaining backward compatible with the old format. This session will cover the advantages of XML catalogs. XML can be used to store metadata in a more flexible way than in traditional SQL tables. Once metadata is stored in XML, it can be indexed and searched in ways that are more similar to popular Web search engines. This will enable libraries to create new user interfaces to their catalog, as well as build other applications. In addition, this talk will present a series of user interface examples and uncovered usability issues typical of the library catalogs of today.

POS16: Research Tools at the University Of Rochester

Nathan D. Sarr, University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is currently engaged in several projects it feels will add great value to the higher education community. These projects include Researcher Pages, Statistics Display and the Checksum tool, which is being jointly developed by Cambridge, MIT, and the University of Rochester. These projects were developed to work with the open source digital repository called DSpace. Each DSpace enhancement was developed out of research with users with specific objectives in mind. Researcher Pages were created to expand faculty interest, enhance their experience, and showcase their research in our DSpace system with the added result of increasing the size of our digital repository. Statistics Display was added to provide real-time, up-to-date information about DSpace usage and to help measure the value it is providing to an institution and its community. The Checksum tool was developed to allow, at least at some level, assurance that we would be able to uphold our promise of digital preservation over time. This presentation will include a demonstration of each DSpace enhancement with a discussion of the goals, technical decisions, and trade offs resulting from the choices made.

POS17: Web Design

Jeannine Papelino, University of Rochester

When building a Web site, what types of design elements can be added to strengthen its visual appeal? How does a graphic designer approach a project when designing for the Web? This session presents an indepth look at how a graphic designer uses colors, photos, and visual elements to strengthen the look and image of a Web site.

POS18: Faculty/Advisor Resource Center

Theresa McCoy, Southwest Missouri State University

This poster session would highlight the key features of the Web site we created to aid faculty and advisors. This site has been highly praised by those who use it. Through this site advisors can electronically record advisement session communications and monitor academic progress. Faculty can grant or deny course permission requests, and review or waive prerequisite checks. Academic department heads can adjust course enrollment limits and monitor sections that have no instructor assigned. Deans can set academic status flags, and the list goes on. Let us give you a peek at what we've found to be a very successful and popular tool.