Outsourcing to IST Students
As one of the leading of the leading i-schools in the country, I find it hard to believe that the College of IST could have such a lack of creativity and innovation with the college’s website. The site navigation resembles a maze, and the content delivery is mediocre. Like the IST Student Government T-shirt says, “You can never find the link to TechTrak.”
As an institution that trains the future workforce of the technology industry, the College of IST should be pushing the boundaries of website design. I don’t think the renovation of the IST website should be confined to the normal channels either. Why not open the IST website to current IST students. It could be a perfect opportunity for the college to offer a part-time job, internship, or independent study to students who could use the experience.
The IST website program could run on an annual schedule. Interested IST students could work hand-in-hand with the Solutions Institute for an academic year. The program could go through the entire process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution. Execution could be handled by the Solutions Institute over the summer if there isn’t enough time during the academic year.
Having a program like this could be a great way for the College of IST to not only give students project-based experience, but also give the college a more competitive and productive reputation.
The IST website is only one example of outsourcing to students. Go ahead and share any other ideas for the IST Building staff to explore!
Tags: independent study, internship, IST website, job, outsource, Students, website design
Categories: Opinion, Suggestions
9 Comments, Comment or Ping
Matt Maisel
NOTE: At the time of this post the Solutions Institute website was down.
Apr 14th, 2008
Caroline Furey
Matt, actually Dean Foley spoke about improving the IST website at the last Dean Feedback session. He said basically the same thing you did, that as an i-school we need an awesome website. I assume they are currently working on improvements to it. Hope to see some changes in the upcoming months.
Apr 14th, 2008
Daehee Park
The sub-sites of the PSU IST domain are screaming desperately for a design overhaul as well. WTF is this: http://ist.psu.edu/networker/
There probably are policies that make this impossible, but contracting out projects to individuals or teams of students would be more efficient than running it through the Solutions Institute. It’s not just the websites within IST that need help, but also things like the software running within the touch screen kiosks. Let students bid for work that needs to be done, and it could also look good on their resumes.
Apr 14th, 2008
Daehee Park
A list of other i-schools at http://www.ischools.org/oc/schools.html
* University of California, Berkeley
School of Information
* University of California, Irvine
The Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
* University of California, Los Angeles
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
* Drexel University
College of Information Science and Technology
* Florida State University
College of Information
* Georgia Institute of Technology
College of Computing
* University of Illinois
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
* Indiana University
School of Informatics
* Indiana University
School of Library and Information Science
* University of Maryland
College of Information Studies
* University of Michigan
The School of Information
* University of North Carolina
School of Information and Library Science
* The Pennsylvania State University
College of Information Sciences and Technology
* University of Pittsburgh
School of Information Sciences
* Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies
* Syracuse University
School of Information Studies
* University of Texas, Austin
School of Information
* University of Toronto
Faculty of Information Studies
* University of Washington
Information School
Apr 14th, 2008
Tom Bierly
Solutions Institute used to work on the website with Students. You probably don’t remember, but the website you see now is not the one that used to be there. This new re-design is an amazing step forward from what it was, however, you are right it’s still a mess. Many of the things you mentioned were noted before and were to be addressed; however, duties of maintaining the website were moved to IT instead of solutions. IT has recently brought in a new group of professionals tasked specifically to tackling this mess, and I look forward to what they do (I’m not sure when we can expect to see any major changes, but I’ll ask around and see if I can find out). As for working with Solutions, they have many big new projects about to begin this summer, if you’re interested in completing an internship with them, they are interviewing now. If you drop off your resume with Audrey Boob, she will be able to schedule an interview for you.
Apr 14th, 2008
Caroline Furey
Posting work for the College to be done by students is a great idea. Students might even do it for free if it can go on their resume. Like Daehee though, not exactly sure how that would work or if it is even possible.
Apr 14th, 2008
Daehee Park
Tom - thanks for the tip on the internship opportunities at the SI.
Apr 14th, 2008
Mike
@ Tom Bierly - Amazing step forward, how so? I remember saying to myself, “wow, this is so much worse. There used to be some great IST building headers and the old site was fairly well designed aesthetically. Now the header is… blue. There are tons of really great stock building photos that are used in a lot of the promotional material, they should put them back to good use.
Apr 22nd, 2008
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