Portal Implementation at La Salle University Sabrina DeTurk Assistant Provost La Salle University Presented 4/6/04 for the Philadelphia Chapter of the Society for Information Management

La Salle University La Salle is a Catholic, comprehensive University founded by the Christian Brothers in Philadelphia in Committed to personalized, humanistic, practical education Two campuses: one in northwest Philadelphia and one in Newtown, Bucks County, 25 miles north of the city

La Salle University 5,500 undergraduate, graduate and continuing education students annually enroll in one of three schools: Arts and Sciences, Business and Nursing Students come from 25 states and 37 foreign countries Two-thirds of undergraduates live on campus 90% of graduate students are working professionals attending part-time

Why have a portal at La Salle ? Driving Forces –Initially Driven by Admissions Office –Committee selected a product that was integrated with computer systems across campus –Portal system viewed as an opportunity to improve communication with all university constituencies –“ Cradle to Grave ” access to information and technical resources (e.g., ) from the University

Decision Making Process Requirements : –Ability to integrate with BANNER Student Information System (SIS) –Personalization –Customization –Portable

Portal Implementation Implementation Team –“ Portal Action Team ” – La Salle Constituents Content Team Marketing/Training Team Technical Team – Outside Consultants SCT/Campus Pipeline Consultants – Prospective Student Portal – /Calendar Single-Sign-On (SSO) iNotes Consultants – /Calendar Integration

Portal Implementation Challenges –Communication with key constituencies University Departments –Office of Admissions –University Communications –Information Technology (IT) Computer Governance Committee (Upper Management) Consultants –Need for “ Top-Level ” Support –Managing Change Technologically Change Averse Constituents Help-Desk Support

Distinctive features of mylasalle Prospective Student Portal (PSP) –Allows/encourages prospective students to create portal accounts –Pushes customized admissions content –Collects information into Banner SIS for use in recruiting iNotes Integration –More robust Webmail tool –Presented challenges in password and data synchronization –One of the biggest barriers to user satisfaction

Continuing Challenges Integration w/other systems Scalability/load issues Account Management Help Desk Support Collecting/analyzing usage data End-user buy-in Content production and management Connections to University Web site Collaborative tools (especially groups)

Survey Highlights 93% access mylasalle daily or weekly 58% use it primarily to check 17% use it primarily to access SIS 34% say they are least likely to use mylasalle to read content in a channel 73% have not subscribed to any channels Qualitative feedback focuses on usability issues

Moving Ahead Hired a full-time manager for portal Implemented new management structure –Portal manager –Portal Steering Committee –Functional areas / teams Cultivate high level administrative support Integrate “care and feeding” of the portal into daily operations in all areas of University