Martin's BCIM Website Blog

Today we had a second team meeting to follow on from the one we had on 20th September. At today's meeting we noted/discussed/agreed the following.

Progress Reports...

• Martin
  • Review the Faculty Staff Handbook and the Briefing & Resources Handbook (these were handed out at the Faculty Awayday last week) and update our web pages where necessary to incorporate any updated and/or additional information.
    I have made a start on this, but need to devote more time to it! [See point 1 under "Future Work" below.]
  • Create new web pages to present information about the Faculty's Combined Hons courses.
    Am waiting for Nigel P. to liaise with his "other half" and get back to me about what information they would like on the web about our Combined Hons courses in the areas of Business and Computing. Nigel said that altogether our Faculty has about 50% of all the Combined Hons students within the University.
  • Contact the QLS (the new student records system) project team to set up a meeting to discuss the possibility of us getting access to their database(s) - e.g. for student cohort email distribution lists, and cohort student photos.
    I contacted Steve D. (LSBU's Information Systems Manager) about this. He said: "We have set up a data feed from QLS to CAMS, the computer accounts management system in CSD. This in turn provides information to the phonebook. Regarding students' email, organised by cohort, etc, we have been asked for this facilty before; the issue is data quality, which currently means that a mailshot will not target the exact group as precisely as you may require. Similarly, the download of the photos from the security system is sporadic at present. If there is sufficent demand, I can try to apply pressure to improve it."
  • Approach the owners of the various BCIM Research Centres etc. that currently have websites which are not in the "house style" to ask whether they would like us to create new websites for them. (I won't do this until we have the time available to undertake the work, though.)
    I approached the Head of the National Bakery School about this; they would like us to re-work their website! [See point 2 under "Future Work" below.]
   
  
• Imran
  • Revising our home page...
    Done, together with Martin. (See this blog entry for details.)
  • Work on the new Language Centre website...
    This is progressing well, although there is still quite a lot of work left to do.
  • Review our existing StudentWeb and consider whether we can make any improvements.
    Still to be done.
  • Other work has included...
    • embedding images within various pages (e.g. the main COURSES page, the BUSINESS page and the Business Development Office page),
    • embedding a selection of staff photos within the PEOPLE page and creating a prototype staff photo broswer to help us choose new photos once a month to keep the PEOPLE page looking fresh,
    • redesigning our maps pages; this area now features an impressive Google map of the Southwark Campus, and also a nice pictorial map of the Southwark Campus that was scanned in from the Language Centre's brochure (and subsequently modified).
   
  
• Mike
  • Work on a "Student Cohort Emailer"...
    This is still to be done. Mike thinks that we should provide a generic facility so that staff can set up their own email lists, because the notion of a "student cohort" doesn't always correspond neatly to a group of students who are in the same year of the same course.

    We discussed how the system could work, and agreed (?) that while it ought to be accessible via the "StaffWeb Emailer" link (within the StaffWeb), it should be kept separate thereafter from the existing StaffWeb Emailer. Mike said that he would prefer to create a new PHP script for this rather than extend the existing StaffWeb Emailer script. Course Directors should be able to specify a list of students by quoting either their student ID numbers or their email addresses. The email lists should (?) expire automatically after the end of each academic year.

    We also discussed Paul C.'s idea to implement an SMS announcements service for those students who would like to receive announcements via their mobile phones as well as (instead of?) via email. Paul suggested that for a fixed fee the Faculty could have a quota of SMS messages, but it wasn't clear to us whether these could be sent via a web interface or whether the SMS messages would need to be sent from a PC-based desktop application. If it's the former, then in principle it ought to be possible to extend the Emailer to send messages via SMS to those students who request this service. Mike will talk to Paul about this.

   
  
• James
  • Review the Enterprise Activity Report (this was handed out at the Faculty Awayday last week) and update our web pages where necessary to incorporate any updated and/or additional information.
    Done.
     
  • Consider developing a set of web pages and/or some kind of database-driven system to cater for BCIM alumni and other "friends of the Faculty"; this will involve liaison with those responsible for the University's alumni database as well as senior managers within our Faculty to decide what exactly needs doing.
    James has met with Roger S. to discuss this, but the requirements seem a little vague at present. James will be meeting with Roger again soon for further discussions.

    James said that one fairly definite requirement seemed to be an email facility so that announcements could be sent out to "Friends of the Faculty" - or perhaps just to specific sub-groups, such as ex-students, or businesses with which we have some kind of established links. We discussed the possibility of augmenting the (yet to be developed) "Student Cohort Emailer" to cater for this. The requirements would be a little different...

    • these email lists shouldn't expire at the end of an academic year,
    • recipients ought to be able to opt out of receiving messages.
   

Future Work...

1. Martin to finish updating our web pages where necessary in line with the Faculty Staff Handbook and the Briefing & Resources Handbook, both of which were handed out at the Faculty Awayday in September.
    
2. James volunteered to develop a new website for the National Bakery School.
    
3. Mike to make a start on the "Student Cohort Emailer".
    
4. Martin to query Geoff about his request for more standardised "academic cv pages" (see the last point in this blog entry); do we really need this?
    
5. Mike to liaise with Paul C. and/or Chris B. to get an up-to-date list of BCIM technicians for posting within the StudentWeb.
    
6. Martin to liaise with Karen W. to get an up-to-date list of BCIM administrators for posting within the StaffWeb.
    
7. Imran to work on ridding the /bcim/ account of the old, unused files and cgi-scripts that are left over remnants of our initial, hastily constructed Faculty website.
    
8. Mike to add a facility to the StaffWeb to allow staff to look up the email address and full name corresponding to a student's ID number. This is a facility that Phonebook ought to offer, but it doesn't.
    

Ideas for longer-term projects...

1. The University has purchased the RedDot Content Management System several months ago (see the note at the bottom of this blog entry) and this is now being used for many of the top-level LSBU pages. Sooner or later (I've been told, more or less) we will be invited/instructed to use RedDot for our website too, along with the other Faculties. It makes sense. One objective is to create a more consistent LSBU-wide look and feel to all of our web pages, and another is to empower Course Directors etc. to be able to update the web pages for which they are responsible, without them needing any HTML skills. However, I imagine that if we switch over to using RedDot this could mean that we may no longer be able to have any of the nice hand-crafted pages that we have now. (I'm thinking of the embedded images, embedded Google map etc.) So, when the time comes, we ought to investigate whether there's a way that we can have RedDot contribute to our website without enforcing a straightjacket on us. For example, maybe we could set up a dummy /bcimreddot/ account for RedDot to manage, and then we could copy the pages as required across to the live /bcim/ account. This may turn out to be very easy, or very hard. It may even not be necessary; perhaps RedDot will allow us to include our own additional, hand-crafted pages. It's probably not worth us worrying about it just yet, but I feel that there could be a project lurking here.
    
2. Despite the fact that we will sooner or later be using RedDot, I feel that we could do with having a lightweight Content Management System of our own to supplement the "Student Cohort Emailer" (and/or the "Friends of the Faculty Emailer"!). The idea would be to enable a Course Director (for example) to add content to a web page for the students on their course, with part of that web page displaying the most recent emailed announcements in a similar fashion to the StaffWeb Home Page (see this blog entry).

 
Next meeting...

• Monday 12 December at 2:30pm.