College plans to revamp Web site

Author: Tim O'Grady

This past spring President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz appointed an Internet Strategy Task-Force to explore the various ways in which Middlebury's Web site could be improved. The task-force released a report formally addressing the problems and shortcomings of the College Web site, as well as recommendations to how the Web site could be enhanced.

Acting upon the recommendations laid out in this report, Liebowitz charged the Middlebury Web Makeover Team, which has been holding meetings this Fall, to reconceptualize the College's Web site. The group is currently contacting faculty, staff, students, donors and other groups to learn what currently works and how the Web site can be improved to better suit the needs of the College's diverse community.

Input from the College's various groups is the most crucial element of this initiative since members of the College community utilize the Web site most frequently. Student input is especially valued, because students are the Web site's primary audience and younger people generally have a better idea of the power and possibilities of the Web.

"Students are Web natives - they've grown up with the Web as part of their information environment," said Mike Roy, Dean of Library and Information Sciences, in an e-mail. In the near future the group will be holding public discussions, setting up various focus groups and distributing surveys to better identify the needs of students, faculty and staff.

Middlebury community members are also encouraged to visit http://blogs.middlebury.edu/webredo/ where they can read about the initiative and participate directly in the site makeover. Anyone can comment about posts written by Web Makeover Team members or e-mail their own ideas for improvement.

According to the task-force's report, the primary problem with the current Web site is that the layout is very uniform and static. The site is not very interactive and does not incorporate enough multimedia features. Additionally, the current structure does not fare well with the various constituencies that utilize the Web site. Prospective students, current students, faculty members and alumni all use the Web site for very different reasons, but there is little room for customization to suit each group's specific needs.

Another problem addressed in the Internet Strategy Task Force's report is that the site does not highlight the artistic work and scholarly findings published by faculty members and students. Many Middlebury students, alumni and faculty members have private sites showing their work, but there is very little linkage between these sites and the College's site. The Task Force addressed the need to consolidate Middlebury affiliated content on the Web so that users can access all of the information via the Middlebury Web site instead of using various satellite sites.

"There is so much value to be realized from the Middlebury network and the experiences people have had - we hope to capture some of that value via the Internet," said Mike Roy.

The site's last major facelift occurred in several phases over the course of 2003-2005. The first stage was the implementation of Microsoft CMS, the software used to manage the site, which was first used in 2003. Later, the College hired BigBad, a Boston-based Web design company, in the end of 2003 which worked in collaboration with LIS to redesign and restructure the site. Throughout the 2004-2005 academic year, every College office and academic department was incorporated into the new design structure, completing the Web site's makeover.

The Web Makeover Team expects the launch date for the first phase of the project to be in Sept. 2009.