A Successful Approach in College‐wide Web Sites Development
| Pages | 16-18 |
| Published date | 01 July 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050410554852 |
| Date | 01 July 2004 |
| Author | James Lin |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
A Successful Approach in College-wide
Web Sites Development
James Lin
16 LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 6 2004, pp. 16-18, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050410554852
Background
The College of Humanities, Arts and
Social Sciences (CHASS) at University
of California, Riverside (UCR) is the
largest college on the UCR campus,
with 19 academic departments, four
formal research centers, offering 55
majors and more than 40 minors. The
college is unique in its combination of
the arts, humanities, and social
sciences, a structure that facilitates
cross-disciplinary teaching and
research. The college includes the
Sweeney Art Gallery, the UCR-
California Museum of Photography,
and the campus' exhibition and
performance facilities.
In early 2000, newly arrived dean,
Patricia O'Brien, had a vision of making
an appropriate Web presence an
essential element of the CHASS. A
proper Web site presence across the
college was determined to be the top
information technology (IT) priority
task. She requested Professor Robert
Hanneman, who later was appointed as
Associate Dean for Instructional
Technology and Research, to lay out the
technology plan for CHASS. James Lin
was hired in August 2001 to serve as the
Director for CHASS College
Computing to implement the IT and
college-wide Web presence needs. In
addition, funding was provided to hire
student interns and other IT
professionals to create the CHASS IT
team, CHASS College Computing (C
3
).
Project development methods
In November of 2001, CHASS
initiated a project campaign to make
Web sites across the college meet
standard baseline requirements and
have common navigation architectures.
However, there were two major
challenges to be overcome in order to
accomplish these tasks. First, it was
essential to obtain the consent from all
Web stakeholders to participate in the
project. The project teams needed to
address their concerns, particularly for
those who claimed the project might
result in losing autonomous status
within the system. The project teams
needed to learn the stakeholders'
desires for a unique Web presence,
distinct features, and functions. Second,
with only one newly hired IT
professional in the college, there was
limited funding, and on a tight
schedule, it was a challenge to find
proper resources to support technical
programming, artistic design, content
development and maintenance, and
purchase adequate hardware
infrastructure and software tools.
To meet the first challenge, a multi-
phase development method and a
project organization was established.
One of the components of the project
organization was the Project Advisory
Committee whose members included
volunteers of faculty and staff and was
chaired by the Associate Dean for
Instructional Technology and Research.
The influential committee approved the
standardized baseline requirements and
the Web page common navigational
architecture, and created a good prelude
for convincing the stakeholders. To
facilitate the development process, a set
of Web design templates were made
available online for the stakeholders to
view and choose. To meet the second
challenge, a very close collaboration
between CHASS and UCR's
Computing & Communication (C&C)
was established with commitment from
top administrators of both units (Dean
Patricia O'Brien and Associate Vice
Chancellor Chuck Rowley). C&C
contributed to the Web development
technical team, Center for Visual
Computing (CVC), for Web
programming and design graphics at no
cost to CHASS. CHASS' newly formed
IT team C
3
, whose members included
the director and a team of
undergraduate student interns, debuted
the project to all stakeholders,
coordinated the project, and prepared
the Web contents for CVC. CVC
worked closely with C
3
and transferred
developed Web sites to C
3
as part of the
collaboration. To meet the tight
schedule, Web sites were developed
based on a prioritized order: academic
and outreach programs, followed by
facilities, and finally research-related
Web sites. A basic principle was
promoted: ``Working together as a
team''.
To facilitate the development
process, strategies and methods were
put into action. The project
organization consisted of a project
coordinator, project advisory
committee, publishing advisory team,
technical design team, and content
management team. Three phases of
development were created. Phase I
consisted of development and
technology transfer. CVC and C
3
jointly developed new Web sites for
those units who had no Web presence or
poorly designed Web sites. Phase II was
oriented towards enhancement. Web
sites with new technology were
enhanced with common navigation
architecture and contents. This phase
was solely handled by C
3
. Phase III
highlighted the maintenance aspect of
the campaign. C
3
developed new Web
sites and/or maintained all developed
Web sites.
The first strategy was to establish
college-wide Web site development
standard baseline requirements and
common navigation architecture to
achieve the uniformity of the Web
technology. It set the minimum
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