Students propose BuzzPort overhaul

A year ago David Ward, fifth-year Computer Engineering Major, was at the LeaderShape retreat when he and a group of other students began discussing communication technologies at Tech. He knew there was a problem.

"I raised the question, 'Why is it so hard to find out about involvement opportunities on campus? Why is there no central place or portal to access things and find things out?'" Ward said.

Ward and other interested students drafted a "wish list" of features they felt were most needed in a communications portal. The keyword was "integration" of e-mails, course information, extra-curricular events and campus services announcements all rolled into one easy-to-use, customizable system that would make life a little easier for busy students.

Alex Wang, a fourth-year Biochemistry and Biology major, became involved in the initiative last year. Today he provides a link to the Student Government Association in his position as special assistant to the president for campus communications.

"Ask yourself, how many sites do you have to log into to access the information you need? T-Square, WebCT, professors' websites, BuzzPort, Webmail-all this can be integrated. Originally, BuzzPort was intended to do this, but we're paying for other duplicate systems-it's like we have eight wheels when we only need two," Wang said.

What began as a "wish-list" last spring is now a major student-led initiative to assess the BuzzPort web portal and suggest improvements that could result in an overhaul of the current system. The initiative, which is not affiliated with any particular group on campus, has been working closely with SGA and was recently able to reach top-level administrators who are listening to what these students have to say.

On Aug. 27 Anu Parvatiyar, undergraduate student body president, led a presentation for a group of university administrators that identified the problem of communication disparity for students and highlighted the impact on Tech of paying for several information systems with overlapping features.

"The administration is making [the project] a huge priority. In the next nine to 12 months we should be either overhauling BuzzPort or coming up with something new. We're not going to reinvent the wheel, but if BuzzPort can't integrate then we will need to try something new," Parvatiyar said.

Ronald Hutchins, associate vice provost for Research and Technology, was present at the Aug. 27 presentation. He has been working directly with students and has an idea of what he thinks the next step should be in the initiative.

"I suggested to students we find people on campus who are experts in this. My idea is to have something like the iPhone; what Apple did was build a user interface that makes it intuitive, easy, and quick to get to what users want and use the most," Hutchins said. However, he said a timeline would not be defined for now.

John Mullin, chief information officer, has been on the BuzzPort steering committee for a number of years and heard about the student-led initiative from Hutchins.

"The initiative is interesting and there are some good, provocative ideas, but there is also some degree of overlap with initiatives already underway with BuzzPort, already underway with the T-Square course-management system and with the OIT initiative of e-mail, calendar, and contacts," Mullin said.

Mullin said work has begun to perform an upgrade of the core code that runs BuzzPort, which is Luminus-based.

He also said that there are plans to merge the T-square course management system and the e-mail, calendar and contacts initiative, which will feature an integrated calendar and contact system with e-mail on Zimbra technology.

"I agree with students that we can do better than what we have, but the Holy Grail as a single source of all information may not be pragmatically achievable," Mullin said.

For now, Ward said he will be working with Hutchins on a human-computer interaction study with students to assess "screen for screen" what will be most effective in a web portal. Though BuzzPort may be developed to incorporate such improvements, Ward said there are a number of free open source portal software programs that could be considered as replacements.

"This [project] is a matter of when, not if. We don't know how much it's going to cost, but the funding will come," Parvatiyar said.