The third major revision of the MIS Community site has been finalized and deployed. The theme of this version is an intense focus on realizing the ‘community’ people-centric vision:
- The home page layout is logically organized around News (on the left), In-depth content (middle), and Community (the sidebar on the right). This design metaphor is applied everywhere. For example, the BBA in MIS program page includes content on the left and (relevant) community on the right. If you are a top student, you might see yourself on there!
- Every single page on the main site has been updated and is now focused on the community vision. Related to that, the new totals widget (top right of the home page) shows the full breadth of our community and all the items are clickable – click the “activity today…” to see what is going on today!
- The new E-portfolio wire showcases the professional interests and accomplishments of students. If a student adds a skill, job interest, updates their job status, changes their major, or submits their e-portfolio. You will see it first on the e-portfolio wire!
- The site has been re-architected from the ground up to increase performance. You have likely seen performance improvements in the last few weeks. They include (a) a mobile responsive theme that will adjust to different devices, screen sizes, and connection speeds (try the site on your mobile device), (b) custom developed plugins by the MIS department that add community relevant features, (c) feed aggregation that allows us to continue integrating multiple sources of content through RSS but without the performance hit. This was a massive behind the scene effort and critical toward allowing us scale the site and concept.
- Social integration, so that you can leave comments on the site or push pages to the main social platforms (e.g., Facebook). The department also has related sites on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Flickr.
- We will be rolling out more updates in the next few weeks as well as new student e-portfolio themes. We are also starting to help other academic units at Temple catch the community wave, but the MIS community site was the first and will remain the gold standard! Stay tuned.
The MIS community site is a unique learning, collaboration, and social platform; there is no other like it. And now it is better and even closer to the community vision.
