Web Task Force (WTF)
9/12/2002 Meeting Notes
(These are not comprehensive notes.)
WTF Kickoff - Welcome New Members
Introduce Rob Smedfjeld (new President of the Faculty Senate) and Kathy Phelan (Associate Director of College Relations and the College Foundation) (Kathy was unable to attend this meeting).
Workshops for Faculty and Staff
Two Web Team workshops related to the websites will be presented by either Cheryl or Paula:
- Website Overview, 1.5 hrs, same as Flex Workshop Cheryl gave in August 2002
- Working with the Web Team, 1 hr
Review of Current Website
Reviewed the features of the Ohlone College website which we had planned last semester. The A-Z Index is a big hit with the students according to the reporter who interviewed Cheryl for a recent article in The Monitor newspaper. The A-Z Index is also Cheryl's favorite navigation feature!
Review the Web Center
Reviewed the features of the Web Center which is the central resource for educational resources related to web technologies used on the Ohlone College website.
Discussion re Requirements and Implementation of the Web Style Guide
Cheryl and Paula talked extensively this week about the requirements of the Web Style Guide. Cheryl is uneasy about requiring so much from people who have little knowledge about HTML, web design, accessibility, etc. She asked the WTF to review the purposes of the guidelines -- i.e., what are we trying to accomplish? The main purposes are:
- To brand each page as belonging to Ohlone College (i.e., logo and standard footer).
- To meet ADA requirements for accessibility of our web pages for all people, including those with disabilities. There are legal ramifications if we do not do this.
- To provide consistent and correct information for all websites, especially Division and Department websites.
- To meet common web standards for the HTML or XHTML coding of each page.
Cheryl also discussed the fact that there are many Division and Department websites that have no one designated as being responsible for maintaining them (i.e., no web server account have been created for those sites). Suggestion: Target the Deans since they should be providing this information - possibly by starting with Jim Wright. In addition, content providers still need to be designated for some of websites managed by the Web Team. [Update 9/16/2002: Shirley Peck offered to contact each Dean personally to try to get this information. Cheryl will provide a spreadsheet for each website that needs to have a site maintainer or content provider designated.]
Cheryl brought up her desire to change the wording of some of the guidelines from "requirements" to "recommendations". The majority want to keep the term "requirements".
A lengthy discussion ensued about implementation of the Web Style Guide requirements. It was decided that a phased implementation schedule would be created and brought to TACO for its review and approval. The next TACO meeting is Friday, 9/26/2002. [Update 9/16/2002: Cheryl is unable to attend the October TACO meeting so we want to get on the agenda for the September meeting.]
The initial phased implemention schedule discussed is:
- All Academic Division websites will meet all requirements by May 2003 with the knowledge that the easiest way for a Division site to do this is to have the Web Team manage their site (only content in Word docs would need to be provided by the Division).
- All Academic Department websites will meet all requirements by May 2004.
[Update 9/16/2002: Shirley, Cheryl and Paula met to more finely tune the phased implementation scheduled so that there wasn't a period of over a year in which Departments/Committees/Other Campus Groups/Faculty/Staff websites met none of the guidelines. Cheryl is still working on a document describing the new schedule. This new schedule will be brought to the TACO committee on 9/26/2002. It will also be emailed to WTF members for their comments.]
Discussion re Pulling Faculty Schedule from WebAdvisor for use on Websites
I believe it was Bob Bradshaw who initially brought this up. He indicated that faculty members are interested in having their schedules available for view by students (and other faculty). Currently, Web Advisor provides the ability for each faculty member to lookup their own schedule but does not allow others to view it. In addition, it is not possible now to add information (such as office hours) to a faculty member's schedule. Office hours would be important information to provide if the schedules can be made public to students and others.
There is also still some hope that somewhere down the line when the Datatel computer is stable that it will be possible to connect to the Datatel/Colleague database and pull information from it for presentation in faculty, Division/Department websites. For example: Courses offered in a particular degree etc. This is a future phase of the website project. Tj reports that the Datatel/Colleague computer (software and hardware) will be upgraded next semester(?) and that there is little possibility that pulling information from that system will occur before the upgrades.
Brainstorm Possible Features for Further Improvement
Use of Student Photography in the Headers of the Standard Templates
Cheryl has spoken with Kurt Viegelmann about including a project in his color photography course for students to create photographs specifically targetted for use on the Ohlone College website. Kurt was provided with the information covered in the 5/21/2002 WTF meeting last semster in which this idea was discussed.
Kurt is retiring at the end of this semester. [Update 9/20/2002: He will be teaching part-time after his retirement.] Color Photography is usually offererd in the Spring semester. Cheryl should contact Carol Lawton (Photography) and Alvin Thompson(sp?) (Digital Photography) to discuss this type of project for their students also.
Database-driven management of A-Z Index and Resource pages
Currently, the A-Z Index and Resource navigation pages are manually maintained. Cheryl would like to implement a database at some point but other projects are taking priority and the idea is still "germinating".
Home Page Items
Dr. Paulette Perfumo's bulletin is distributed in hard copy to all employees each week. We may be able to include a blurb in the bulletin to advertise the need for home page items. Cheryl will also begin sending on a more regular basis email messages to the "announcement" list about home page items, workshops, and other website-related topics.
Possible campus-wide events calendar
During her interview for The Monitor newspaper, Cheryl was asked why there wasn't a Campus Events calendar available on the website. May Seet brought to the committee's attention that the ASOC website has a Calendar of Events located at http://www2.ohlone.cc.ca.us/org/asoc/calendarmain.html. It looks as follows:
The calendar is hosted off-site by The Zone at http://www.eventplanlive.com/zone/main.asp. We assume someone (Mara Van de Ven?) in ASOC maintains this calendar.
Someone is also feeding information to The Monitor newspaper for their events calendar. Hmmm, who has this information?
Cheryl wants to host an events/news calendar to replace the regular manual posting of items on the home page. She has learned about VT Calendar which is an open source event calendaring software created by Virginia Tech (http://opensource.isc.vt.edu/products/vtcalendar/).
The image above is the weekly format. As you can see, Virginia Tech has a lot going on! The program probably has a variety of views and should be looked into further. There are, of course, other calendaring programs available, some are freeware, open source, or shareware or full-fledged commercial products.
Tj and Cheryl will look into it, but it does not take priority over other tasks at this time.
Emergency