A Comprehensive Methodology for Campus Portal Development

INTRODUCTION

A campus portal is an exciting recent phenomenon forming part of the new generation of online services for all stakeholders in institutions of higher education. Conceptually, the general notion of a portal should be to be distinguished from that of other Web-based applications and the traditional Intranet of the institution. The literature review in the first phase of this research indicates that the major distinguishing characteristics of a campus portal are (1) personalisation, by which end-users are only able to access information and online services pertinent to their activities, and (2) customisation, by which end-users are able to select their preferred information channels and optional online services.

The major objective of this research is to propose a development methodology specifically suitable for campus portal projects. While there are many accepted development methodologies for traditional and Web-based information systems, no clear body of knowledge on the development of campus portals has yet been recognised. Additionally, as this is a new area, the definitions, terms, concepts, and important issues agreed to by academic researchers and practitioners are still evolving. This research, therefore, needs to clarify and identify some important issues regarding campus portals and their development, prior to composing the development methodology. In the second and third phases of the research, two studies were carried out, a preliminary study and a case study. These generated more understanding of the issues and extended the body of knowledge on campus portals, especially concerning their development.

The preliminary study explored and investigated the online services and campus portals of 40 higher education institutions’ sites in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the UK, and Canada. The findings of the preliminary study show that there are no standard patterns in the function of personalisation and customisation in campus portals. A set of research questions were then put forward to drive further investigation into design and implementation issues regarding the personalisation and customisation functions of campus portals.

The case study was conducted in an Australian university among the major stakeholder groups, namely, the development team and the end-users (students and academic staff). For the study of the development team, interviews were used to gather information on their current practices and their vision for the future direction of the campus portal. Students were the primary focus of the end-user study, from which data was collected using a survey to build up usage patterns of their online activities. In addition, a group of academic staff was interviewed to obtain data from their perspective to identify and clarify some important issues.

In the final phase of the research, the review of existing development methodologies continued filtering them through a set of identified criteria based on the findings of the two studies. Finally, the most appropriate development methodology was selected and modified in order to support the requirements identified in this research as critical for the development of a campus portal. The result was proposed as a campus portal development methodology (CPDM) fulfilling the main objective of the research. Due to the limitation of the length of this article, the major focus is to present a brief finding in which it is summarised from the study of the research. Thereafter, the proposed framework for the campus portals development canbe additionally followed in the article entitled “A Framework for Development: A Campus Portal Accommodating End-Users’ Online Activities.”

UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS OF CAMPUS PORTALS

From this review of the literature, it is suggested that the characteristics of personalisation and customisation, which were implemented in the majority of the descriptions of campus portals, are the most common characteristics that distinguish them from other kind of Web-based systems and applications. It is inferred that it is these two characteristics, personalisation and customisation, that give a campus portal a unique nature and place it among the mature generation of portals. The users of the campus portal can be directly provided with the personalised information and online services through personalisation features, whereas the users will also be enabled to select their preferred contents and optional online services by the customisation functionality.

CLARIFICATION OF PERSONALISATION AND CUSTOMISATION CHARACTERISTICS AND ROLES

Bringing together the literature reviews and the findings of the preliminary study and the case study, the characteristics of personalisation and customisation can be clarified as follows (see also Figure 1).

• Personalisation: The function that allows users to personally receive the information, contents, and online services specific to their needs and roles through the campus portal. The information, contents, and online services will be pre-defined and assigned the appropriate level of priority by the authorising university division (i.e., the academic registrar, faculty, lecturer, and so forth). This personalised information, with content and online services, normally relate to standard or compulsory activities.

• Customisation: The function that allows users to select their preferred information, contents, and online services as well as mode of interaction. The customised information, content, and online services will normally be classified as optional activities.

Additionally, the personalisation and customisation functionality can be viewed from another perspective when the development team need to design and manage these functionalities on the campus portal.

• Personalisation can be viewed and designed as a push system, which enables the faculty, institution, and authorised groups to communicate directly to the users.

• Conversely, customisation can be viewed and designed as a pull system that enables the users to be able to select their favourite types of channels, contents, and online services as well as adding their own links.

position of Campus portal in System Development

The campus portal (CP) is considered to be the next generation of Web technology and may be able to profit a business to have more competitive advantage. There are many disciplines that are related to the campus portal across the area of system development. Based on the definition of a campus portal proposed in this research:

Campus portal is a user-centric campus-wide Web-based information systems that incorporates all types of enterprise and third-party information, activities, and services for providing its stakeholders with a secured personalised and customised single point of access regardless of the original resources by using a standard Web browser.

Figure 1. Personalisation (push) and customisation

Personalisation (push) and customisation

Figure 2. Environment of system development diagram

Environment of system development diagram

It can be seen that the proposed definition of the campus portal combines with many other areas such as the user-centric approach, Web technology, information systems, portal characteristics, and functionalities. Therefore, the development of a campus portal should not be emphasised only as Web site development or in the way of developing a traditional information systems. It should be balanced between both aspects of development.

To clarify the position of campus portal development within information systems and the Web technology development area, an environment of software development diagram (Figure 2) is provided to present a position of campus portal development.

As the brief summary in Figure 2 describes that there are two distinct areas of development, which are information systems development and Web development. It is true that traditional information systems development was generally started in an early generation of the computer-based system in an organisation. After the Internet technology was widely accepted from the public sector, an organisation started to adopt the Internet and the Web to facilitate their business processes. However, an initial adoption of the Web within an organisation was more likely to be used as a publishing tool. It, therefore, makes a clear distinction between information systems and Web development.

At present, the capability of Internet and Web technologies tools are more advanced and completely changed to be a platform of development, a complete replacement of the traditional information systems can be done by using Web technology, which then is called Web-based information systems (WBIS) (Takahashi & Liang, 1997a, 1997b). Moreover, a portal can be considered to be a part of Web-based information systems; it, however, has its own characteristics and functionalities, which are unique from other Web-based applications as clarified in the previous section. As a result, the portal development needs to be separated from WBIS development. It, however, will be still categorised as a subset of WBIS.

PRELIMINARY STUDY ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CAMPUS PORTAL’S UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS

As was identified in the literature reviews, the unique characteristics of all types of the portal that make them distinguish from other kinds of the Web-based system are personalisation and customisation. However, it was very difficult to determine the implemented level of personalisation and customisation in this study because the campus portal was not quite accessible due to the fact that they were protected from unauthorised access. My approach, therefore, was additionally to discover what documents such as help file, user manual, and demo site were provided by the development teams to have more understanding on the implemented campus portal.

It can be concluded that the first generation campus portal provides a low level of the unique characteristics and functions of the campus portal. On the other hand, the implemented level of personalisation and customisation in the second and third generation campus portal could be found on various levels. It can be found that 22.2% of the second and third generation campus portal maintains a very minimal implemented level of the personalisation and customisation, whereas 22.2% offered a medium implemented level, and half (55.6%) offered a high implemented level of the unique functions of the campus portal.

Table 3. Cross tabulation between implemented level of unique functions and type of portal


First

Second/Third

Implemented Level of Unique Functions

Low Level

Count

% within Implemented Level of Unique Functions

22 84.6%

4

15.4%

26 100.0%

% within Type of Portal

100.0%

22.2%

65.0%

Count

4

4

Medium Level

% within Implemented Level of Unique Functions

% within Type of Portal

100.0% 22.2%

100.0% 10.0%

Count

10

10

High Level

% within Implemented Level of Unique Functions

% within Type of Portal

100.0% 55.6%

100.0% 25.0%

Total

Count

22

18

40

% within Implemented Level of Unique Functions

55.0%

45.0%

100.0%

% within Type of Portal

100.0%

100.0%

100.0%

THE CASE STUDY’S FINDINGS

The implications of the findings of the study in light of the literature are summarised here. A campus portal can be considered a technology product, which was developed to serve people and help them on their activities. Therefore, the campus portal should be developed in criteria that meet the user requirement regarding to the users’ characteristics as shown in the usage pattern of their online activities.

Norman (1998) proposed a technology adoption life cycle, which originated from Moore (1991) and was adapted to show the changes in customers as technology matures. Norman (1998, p. 33) explained that “In the early days, the innovators and technology enthusiasts drove the market; they demanded technology. In the later days, the pragma-tists and conservations dominate; they want solutions and convenience.”

It can be found that all students and academic staff in this study have a lot of experience in both computers and the Internet, the technology innovation therefore should support from the existing level of their experience to improve the performance on their daily activities as these people require solutions and convenience.

Although the usage of the campus portal, which ideally offers the personalisation and customisation functions, may require extra competency to manage their preferred channels, activities, and so forth, I believe that these groups of people have already had enough knowledge and ability to handle these major characteristics and functionality of the campus portal.

Therefore, it is quite necessary for the development team to adjust their attitude and vision on the development of the campus portal and distinct its development from the general Web development projects because they are in different characteristics. Moreover, it can be understood that there are always some limitations and problems in order to develop the campus portal or any project. However, the designing of the appropriate level of personalisation and customisation to the educational level perspective is the most important task that needs to be completed prior to the actual development.

According to Eckerson (1999) and Dias (2001), Eckerson (1999) proposed generation of the portal. In fact, users do not understand on the side of the development team that the campus portal should be developed as a recommended generation of the campus portal as proposed by Eckerson (1999), but they expect to see the distinction of the campus portal and general Web site.

Based on the finding that shows the significant difference in usage pattern on their online activities as well as adapting with Norman (1998)’s Model, it would be possible to argue that the personalisation and customisation should be designed as role-focused on the first time of the development because the users now have enough experience in computers and the Internet and expect to gain a benefit of personalisation and customisation to deliver the relevant information and services when the first use of the campus portal.

At least the information, which is currently available on the Web site should be reorganised into a category of the information based on the level and group of the users in order to deliver them properly to the right group of users via the campus portal. This approach is to basically give the opportunity to the users to receive their personalised information and possibily to customise their interested information channels. Other online services may gradually be appended into the campus portal.

THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIVE METHODOLOGY FOR CAMPUS PORTAL DEVELOPMENT

Building a campus portal is one of the most important strategic endeavours in many academic institutions. However, many institutional managers do not see a reason for a campus portal for their institutions and it is more likely that they will want one simple because other institutions have already implemented one (Thomas, 2003). Although many of them may not really understand what a campus portal is, they do, however, go ahead and build one without consideration of the appropriate approach to the development process.

The literature review in Phase One of this research revealed that although there are some enterprise and campus portals development methodologies for practitioners; they are not available in the public domain. In fact, most existing development methodologies are embedded within commercial software packages. This research will not investigate these kinds of development methodologies further because they depend upon the software, which is only provided by the vendors.

Because of the unavailability of the development methodologies within the knowledge of the public domain, many early campus portal developers had no alternative but to develop their own development methodologies to handle and solve their problems regarding their situation and requirements (see Bishop, 2003; Frazee, Frazee, & Sharpe, 2003; Thomas, 2003). This kind of practice could be the source ofproblems in higher education institutions when developing a campus portal. In fact, misunderstandings of campus portal concepts and development issues are among the most serious problems, which lead to no development methodology being applied or the selection of an inappropriate approach to developing a campus portal.

The research findings show that the development team of the Case University is a knowledgeable group of people that have experience in both traditional and Web development projects including the early generation of a campus portal. It is said that this is typical of the situation in many such institutions. Unfortunately, the requirements of the end-users, which is reflected in the usage pattern of their online activities, have grown to reflect those of a more advanced generation of portal where a certain level of personalisation and customisation is considered important. However, there were obvious misunderstandings on the part of the development team on this aspect of campus portals where there was a notable discrepancy between the literature and this research finding. In fact, users currently want the personalisation and customisation to enhance their activity and performance rather than the expectation of having a colourful user-interface.

Therefore, there is a clear indication of the need for the adoption of the formal development methodology to help development teams construct mature campus portals in efficient and effective ways. The introduction at the design stage of personalisation and customisation functionality should be prominent in the flexible environment of the development methodology.

It is also clear that while a distinctive development methodology for campus portal projects is essential for a successful campus portal project, a development team should be aware that the project also needs to meet the goals of the organisation and other user requirements specific to that organisation.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, it is definitely proven that a comprehensive development methodology for campus portal should be implemented in order to provide an appropriate development direction to the development team on the campus portal development project. Although most development teams of academic institutions are considered as experts when considered in the development of information systems and Web-based information systems, the development of portal is somewhat different because of the unique characteristics of the personalisation and customisation.

KEY TERMS

Campus Portal: A user-centric campus-wide Web-based information system that incorporates all types of enterprise and third-party information, activities, and services for providing its stakeholders with a secured, personalised, and customised single point of access regardless of the original resources by using a standard Web browser.

Customisation: The function that allows users to select their preferred information, contents, and online services as well as mode of interaction. The customised information, content, and online services will normally be classified as optional activities.

Personalisation: The function that allows users to personally receive the information, contents, and online services specific to their needs and roles through the campus portal. The information, contents, and online services will be predefined and assigned the appropriate level of priority by the authorising university division (i.e., the academic registrar, faculty, lecturer, and so forth). This personalised information, with content and online services, normally relate to standard or compulsory activities.

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