April 25, 2017
By Jonathan De Leon
Dominican’s new and improved Dom.edu website will be ready to debut by the fall of 2017. The start of a new and more agile DU web experience will allow for more accurate information and better visual pleasing images.
This project looks to improve and leave behind the older sites that lacked good accessibility. Also, the website will be built from a mobile based position first considering the old site was accessed mostly from mobile devices.
There will also be an improved Dominican database that connects with the site to update and edit information with increased efficiency.
These improvements could lead to the eventually elimination of sites like Engage DU, MyDU, and even a complete rebuild of the Dominican mobile app. This possibility would allow the university to save money that can be put toward other technological advances.
Complaints such as incorrect information, slow service and inconvenience of jumping to multiple sites have prompted the support center to take on this massive project.
“In the technology plan, we had dreams of a comprehensive online Dominican experience,” said Jill Albin-Hill, vice president of information technology and chief information officer. “We were trying to get ourselves to where we could finally deliver on that so we got to looking this fall we said, ‘now is our time.’”
Among updates to the website will include the shuttle tracking feature, updated student handbooks and teacher profiles. The teacher profiles will model a methodology developed by Stanford University. Eventually student profiles will also be incorporated in the site as well.
The new site will become much more sensitive to what and how it is being used whether with Wi-Fi or data or with computer or mobile access and adjust accordingly.
The view for students and faculty versus those that aren’t will be different and not the same “sales pitch site” for everything. Students and faculty once they log in will have more accessibility and resources to use and custom ability as well. .
“What we were trying to do is look into our crystal ball and imagine all the things that we would want to be able to do online and build the programming in to start for even the things that it would take us a year or two to use and it be much more database driven,” Albin-Hill.
delejona@my.dom.edu