Success Stories

University of Minnestota Java Applications Dot-Com the Campus

When the University of Minnesota faced the challenge of maintaining its electronic connection to a total population of nearly 70,000 people - while introducing two cutting-edge Web applications - Sun Microsystems' dot-com technology went to work.

The highly innovative, university-grown programs - called My One Stop Electronic Portal and Portfolio 2.0 - are designed to enhance the quality of academics for students and faculty at the university's four campuses (Twin Cities, Duluth, Crookston and Morris). The applications additionally hold great potential for other higher education institutions and college graduates everywhere.

Yet from the university's point of view, the challenge was not to lose its important online relationships in the process of offering the advanced technological applications. "From a business standpoint, we felt we needed to have a portal strategy that would help the university compete with the portal solutions coming from private industry. That's what the My One Stop Portal application does for us," says Kari Branjord, interim director of Web Development. "Our view is the last thing you want to outsource is the university's electronic connection with students. We value that relationship highly."

Branjord adds that the university chose Sun for its online, interactive portal because "Sun hardware, Solaris operating environment and Java are viewed as the best combination to deliver Internet systems. Sun's proven, stable technology and reputation for good customer support were what sold us," she says.

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Single Point of Entry

The My One Stop Portal application is well named, as it serves as a one-stop shop for students, faculty and staff to interact with data and information about themselves on the campus intranet. Offering a single point or electronic "portal" entry for all transactional services provided by the university, My One Stop enables students to register for classes, view grades, check their account and update personal information.

All the services on Minnesota's online site are widely used, with students performing an average of some 3.2 million page downloads monthly. My One Stop provides a dynamic framework for the campus intranet and is fully extendable and customizable. Branjord points out that the university's enterprise Web environment has targeted Java as its technology solution; Web Development finds Java's object-oriented capabilities provide flexibility in a complex server environment with multiple platforms. The Sun Enterprise 450 server and Oracle 8i software that power the applications, in combination with a number of Java servelets and a few applets, offer a fully scaleable and customizable solution.

Web Development's vision is to integrate My One Stop to enable users to plan courses, apply for housing, obtain degree audit reports, submit grades, and shop for university goods, among other activities. Of course, the portal site offers the perfect front-end entry to Portfolio 2.0, the other new application.

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Information Management Tool

Portfolio 2.0 is a powerful management information tool that enables students and other university users to access and share their personal academic data and learning achievements. Students can store information about themselves in a common database and create "views," or organized snapshots of selected information, for private viewing by a professor or advisor, for example. Security has been created around Portfolio 2.0, so only the person designated by the student may see a particular view.

The application makes use of a combination of institutional data, such as addresses and other information, but also includes multimedia documents of learning, including photos, audioclips, videoclips, resumes, documents and papers, art projects and other course work. Portfolio 2.0 is the brainchild of Paul Treuer, a faculty member who works in the Duluth campus's academic support area. Treuer had worked extensively with paper versions of learning and teaching portfolios for undergraduate students, and conceived of the idea for an electronic version of these "portfolios" in 1995. Web Development's work in building the application began in earnest as tools became more sophisticated and links to other databases became possible.

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New Relationship with Sun

With the support of University of Minnesota Duluth's Chancellor Kathryn A. Martin, Treuer approached Sun with his idea to power Portfolio electronically. "Sun got involved initially in the project and made a server available to the university for the Duluth pilot," says Sun representative Robert Reagan in Bloomington. "We looked at models that exist in the industry and worked with the university to come up with the right hardware solution for its needs. It's been very exciting to bring Sun's experience to such a unique project, one I think we'll see duplicated by institutions across the country."

Portfolio 2.0 was targeted for universitywide launch, following a successful pilot at the Duluth campus with some 700 incoming freshman students. "We started with a group of freshmen for two reasons," explains Treuer. "First, we wanted to introduce students to the concept of electronic learning portfolios at the outset of their college years; second, the use of electronic portfolios represents a change in thinking. We have always thought of the institution as the primary owner responsible for information about students, but tools like portfolios allow students to take responsibility for documenting their own learning." He notes that while students are being given increased responsibility for holding onto copies of these documents, the university will continue to make information like student transcripts available on request.

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Lifelong Learning

Web Development is also working with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to modify Portfolio 2.0 to become a key component of the DOL's career programs, including America's Job Bank and America's Learning eXchange (ALX) Career Management Account. Named the ALX Lifelong Learning Portfolio, DOL's portfolio is being built to enable users to save information about themselves and build a lifelong learning plan. It will include skills assessment and skills tracking, and will be rolled out to different industry groups throughout the country.

Portfolio 2.0 essentially offers a tool for lifelong learning, an idea that will grow with the development of new technology. The university's vision is for students to build strong portfolios as they move through the university and continue learning - perhaps at new universities and throughout their careers. Sun is committed to adding value to this effort, and will continue to work to advance the goals of students and higher education as new technologies become available.

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