Last week, the long wait was finally over. The official version of the personal student home page has been completely integrated into the UT network, three years after the Student Union launched a provisional UT student portal.
It was Lars Rengersen who created the portal back in 2002, which was supposed to make every (personal) website and application for students available with a single sign-on - from class schedules to e-mail, from file storage to exam grades. Under the name `Dreamteam,' Rengersen and his friends, Bas Jansen and Marco van Hout, built the portal for the Student Union within a month.
`That was hard work,' Rengersen recalls. His start-up had developed the public room database for the Union. The assignment to build a user-friendly student portal was a logical next step.
`We were told to do the job cheap and quick,' Rengersen says. `And that's what we did. Our strength was that we linked the portal to a forum, where everyone could suggest improvements and new features. We always implemented those ideas as soon as possible - usually the same day, but no later than within a week. It was a piece of custom software that constantly gave us a technological advantage.'
At least, until a year and a half ago. At that time the role of Rengersen and his companions changed from flag-bearer to subcontractor. As originally intended, the pioneer portal had to be structurally imbedded in the UT website. ICT department ITBE went to work on converting the work of the Dreamteam to UT standards Oracle and Java. Other programming languages are not supported in the university and long-term dependence on a third party for such a vital function was not an option.
Rengersen does worry a little bit about the successor of his portal, `Some of ITBE's design decisions are not exactly a picture of usability. However, that is probably because they are using Oracle, which is robust but not very flexible. I hope the ITBE will release a new and improved portal every six months.'
According to Union Chairman Jeroen Borggreve, the portal will still feature a forum for suggestions, at least for the near future. `Formally, it is now a matter of the ITBE, but we will regularly meet with them to discuss feature requests submitted to us directly or through the forum,' Borggreve explains.
Project leader Wytze Koopal of ITBE is confident about that cooperation. `We are very satisfied with the cooperation with Monito, the Student Union and the students that have been testing the portal intensively. This is a good example of a project done for and especially with students.'
ITBE has already started work on a personal portal for employees. An early version, based on the same technology as the student portal, is already on-line and will be expanded over the next few months. (http://mycampus.utwente.nl)
Trans. Jeroen Latour
