Putting More "my" into myUMBC

On April 27, 29, and May 1 at 1 p.m. in Engineering room 023, UMBC’s campus portal architect, Collier Jones, will host “open house” discussions on why and how myUMBC will be changing this summer.  Other sessions will be scheduled as needed.

“Basically, we’re trying to put more ‘my’ into myUMBC,” says Jones, who has worked at UMBC since 2006, and developed one of the most coveted campus portals in higher education. “Given better access to personalized data in peoplesoft and growing user interest in mobile technologies, we’ve realized the form, function and underlying infrastructure of myUMBC needs to evolve. So, we’re starting to make the necessary changes this summer.”

In addition, myUMBC will leverage more robust security features associated with the new campus web environment that will also be changing this summer. Based on a recent technical audit, DoIT determined UMBC’s website was relying on aging infrastructure that would not stand up under heavy usage in a crisis when all other forms of communication may be down.  

Apart from technical issues and opportunities, however, Jones says myUMBC is a growing (and vocal) community that started out originally as an experiment, with some features being overshadowed and not being utilized. Over time, both the technology and people have changed, leading to the creation of new ideas that are both big in scale requiring to relearn a few things but also subtle and nuanced.

For example, the start page will be streamlined to be more personal and easier to see latest updates from groups in the format of an activity feed similar to Facebook and Twitter. The topic section will be replaced with guide and features a complete collection of resources. Help will also be redesigned allowing for quicker access to support pages and connection to experts. Events will be redesigned around interest-based calendars rather than by date alone, meaning that instead of getting a generic list of events happening on a given day you’ll be notified of events whose groups you’ve followed or joined. 

Groups will remain and feature some minor changes that will make it easier to access groups and find new ones. Groups will get their own activity feed with upcoming events and general information and can be followed, similar to a twitter account. Email notifications for groups will also be revamped that gives followers more options on how to be notified (e.g., all, important, or none). 

The community discussions will transition into group form as well and will be broken down by topics to help focus discussions. Groups such as classifieds, academics or politics can be followed and managed separately when updates are posted. 

Spotlights will change to Promotions, a new system that will allow groups to promote posts on the myUMBC page for all visitors to see and will allow the same post to be promoted multiple times without the need of a specific run-time; just a single day the post will be promoted. 

These changes are just a few that will begin to happen over the summer. Jones says the myUMBC team is constantly using feedback and the needs of the community to continue to improve itself for students, faculty, and staff. The scheduled open houses are designed for anyone to give feedback on these changes and ask specific questions.