By Victoria Phetmisy
If you haven’t noticed already, there’s a new MySCAD, now called the MySCAD Portal. “MySCAD went live in August of 2003 largely to support SCAD eLearning which also launched that year. Our recent changes have been the first major “revamp” of MySCAD since the launch in 2003,” said Mike Barsic, Manager of Web Applications and Development at SCAD. Barsic continued, “There are no major changes planned for the near future, but we do plan to continue to create new channels or portlets. Our Portal Manager, Erin Ebert, met with groups of students, staff and faculty in the spring and early summer, and we have a lot of suggestions from her meetings that are still in the queue.”
Ebert explained a student group provided input in the new system.
“The United Student Forum was one of the main influencers for the student perspective,” she said.
The new layout, the design and the general organization was brainstormed and worked out together and the students were asked about what they wanted. Ebert along with a few of her colleagues from Information Services attended several United Student Forum meetings over the spring quarter to gather feedback and suggestions from the group to make MySCAD friendlier. USF’s feedback was used throughout the redesign, Ebert said.
Third year Fashion Marketing and Management student Jordan Carper is a little put off by the new look saying, “It’s a bit confusing to have to re-learn where everything is, especially when some of the links don’t work. And it’s also such a drabby color that it’s even more depressing to log into.”
Though, not every student agrees with Carper. Second year Illustration student Phillip Woods says he believes the site is “easier to access” while saying, “I was only around the old MySCAD for a year, and this updated version is just a lot easier to use – especially to access e-mail from the front page and the student workspace is laid out in more detail. It’s just something everyone will have to get used to.”
“MySCAD needed to be updated because it was too cluttered. SCAD is a growing community. We’ve just outgrown the formal organization of the old MySCAD. Now it’s become more personalized – emails will become more personalized towards what students are involved in, instead of getting a massive email where most students have learned to ignore because it’s not usually relevant to them,” said Ebert.
“The new MySCAD is all about collaboration and making things more cohesive, instead of everything being so dispersed, they’ve moved everything to one central location,” said United Student Forum President Jessica Thiergart. “I used to go onto my MySCAD just to check my email and now I use it for so much more. I just think it’s so much simpler of a system rather than memorizing a sequence of clicks and links to get to, say, registering for classes. Now it’s one simple click.”
USF suggested that the grades and classes students are currently enrolled in be shown in an easily accessible way, without digging through menus. Other suggestions given by USF were that the department directory, common
forms, building hours, and links to departmental blogs be put online. USF is holding tutorial sessions for any students who are interested in learning how to navigate around the new MySCAD. For more info, e-mail usf@scad.edu.
