Next fall, when students go to MyUCDavis on their browser, they will be redirected to a new student portal.
This past November, development began on a new online student services portal, which has yet to be named.
The site will have a student-centered approach, where students will be able to access multiple services on one website, instead needing to navigate multiple websites like MyUCDavis, SISWeb and SmartSite, as they currently do now.
“We want a portal that not only brings the administrative [units] — financial aid, student accounting and the registrar — together, but also the academic units. That includes the four undergraduate colleges, graduate studies and the professional schools, so that we create a platform that’s for everybody,” said Elias Lopez, executive director of Technology and the University Registrar.
Currently, students have to log on to multiple websites to check their grades, financial aid or student accounting. One goal of this project is to have students log on just once to the portal and be able to visit the other websites with ease.
“We had heard a lot of comments from students about multiple sign-ons, having to go to more than one place, not knowing if [they] were still on a website or not. So, we wanted a way to make administrative functions more simple and streamlined,” said Lora Jo Bossio, associate vice chancellor of Student Affairs.
Students will also be invited to help decide on the official name of the portal and critique the content of the website.
“We did a survey asking students … which features [they would] most like to access easily from the home page,” said Nefretiri Cooley-Broughton, director of Student Affairs Marketing and Communication. “We have engaged with the Davis Honors Challenge for this project, because one of the most important pieces for us is making sure we get student input. For their project for this quarter, we’ve asked them to look at the best ways to engage with students and get their feedback.”
Aside from being able to utilize this portal in the fall of 2013, students will also be using this for their Winter Quarter 2014 registration.
“We’ve also gotten a lot of feedback that student’s don’t like SISWeb, so this will eventually replace SISWeb also. All the registration will occur on this website,” Lopez said.
Those involved with the development encourage student participation and feedback to help make sure the portal truly caters to students needs, even after it’s launched.
“While we love to have student feedback from the student leaders and those who are very involved on campus, we actually want everyone — all the students who are a part of this community — to give us feedback,” Cooley-Broughton said.
Bossio said that improvements to the portal will be made consistently.
“As is typical with any wonderful project, before you even get it rolled out the first time, you got phase two, three and four already lined up,” Bossio said. “We’re starting with a fairly large scope for phase one, but there will be enhancements made. So it will become an ongoing and ever-changing, and hopefully ever-improving portal.”
SASHA COTTERELL can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.
