The Higher Education Cooperative Purchase Consortium
|
|
|
Tuesday, October 22, 2002
|
|
Volume 3, Issue 9
|
|
|
|
|  |
|
|
OmniUpdate Web Content Management Solutions
Empowering Administrators, Faculty, and Staff to Maintain Web Sites
If there’s one constant in the last 50 years, it’s that we have turned to technology to address some of society’s biggest challenges. In the 70s, the power of the computer landed on the desktop, thus empowering individual users to access computing power to solve productivity and research problems. Those of us who stood in line to turn in our punch cards (often only to receive error results the next day) can appreciate this quantum leap in technology.
The advent of the World Wide Web created more than just a need to find information, it created a need to publish information in the new medium. But the complexity of the creation and maintenance of web sites has proven a barrier.
The greater the use and expectations, the greater the demands for efficiency.
Most of us have been able to participate in the Web only as observers and harvesters of information because the creation and maintenance of web sites has required skills and applications that are beyond us.
Web sites have typically grown from sites that were “nice-to-have” for posting random information to essential sources of marketing and academic information and communication for the institution.
Expectations for web sites are increasing, yet resources to maintain them are dwindling.
Institutions of higher education are facing increasing pressure to produce web content and manage it, while that they are facing increasing pressure to reduce costs and control resources. There are also increasing expectations and demand for quality and engaging content.
The currency of web site content has been dependent upon submission of the content to a central web master and upon the web master's ability to manage that content.
The evolution of technology in web site creation and development includes a “low threshold application” called OmniUpdate.
“A low threshold application is a teaching/learning application of information technology that the potential user perceives as not challenging, not intimidating, not requiring a lot of additional work or new thinking,” according to Steve Gilbert, President of the Teaching and Learning Group.
At today’s colleges and universities, web browsers and email programs have become the most common low-threshold computer applications. Fueled by low-threshold applications such as word processors coupled with laser printers, the desktop publishing revolution empowered faculty and staff to create and publish printed content.
Similarly, there is a solution today that is revolutionizing the way that we create and maintain web sites. It is called OmniUpdate and it delivers the power of web creation and maintenance to the content owner while preserving the look and feel of the institutional web site. The solution is literally as simple as “browse, point, and click.”
Low-threshold Technology Solution for Colleges and Universities
OmniUpdate™ has become a leader in the Low Threshold Application revolution by offering web content management solutions that are tailored to the needs of higher educational institutions and fit easily into their existing architectures, heavy user demands, and restricted budgets.
OmniUpdate solutions were developed to empower higher education administration, faculty and staff, of any department, to quickly and easily create, update, and maintain designated areas of the college web sites without HTML or programming knowledge.
OmniUpdate was designed with the following objectives in mind:
· to work with the institution’s web sites as they exist today
· to provide browse-point-and-click assess to web creation and maintenance for all users
· to provide an easy-to-use interface that increases faculty usage and adoption while lowering overall requirements for training and support
· to provide the institution with alternatives to increasing costs of centralized web site maintenance
· to provide tools that maintain institutional control over the look, feel, and rights to alter the site
· to help web sites become compliant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
· to provide an easily recognizable ROI from the very first day of usage.
OmniUpdate still allows the IT organization to maintain the level of control that they think is appropriate for their institution. It also offers additional approval features and workflow processes that are customizable by the system administrator to ensure accuracy and appropriateness of content. Consistency and web site design are easily maintained.
Proven Results
OmniUpdate is in use in a number of higher education institutions including California State University Long Beach, the Los Angeles Community College District and Copper Mountain Community College.
“OmniUpdate has been phenomenally successful, and our dean is happy everyone is using it! With the statewide budget cuts, this is the one thing we know we want for next year. We can never go back to not having OmniUpdate,” says technology strategist Jill Horn, of California State University Long Beach.
OmniUpdate can be implemented at your institution in a matter of days.
Contact the OmniUpdate sales department at (805) 484-9400 x212 or email the address given below. Please mention collegebuys.org or schoolboys.org to receive the discount.
Email: sales@omniupdate.com
[PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Published by
Foundation for California Community Colleges
Copyright © 2002 Foundation for California Community Colleges. All rights reserved.
Please use the "Subscribe" box above to receive all future issues, and the "Send to a Colleague" tool to forward this issue to a colleague--especially purchasing officers, buyers, IT directors, heads of instruction or academic services, student services directors, heads of business services, department heads, foundation directors, etc.
|
SEND TO A COLLEAGUE
|
|
| |
