NEIUport is now online. Tables have been set all over campus promoting, and helpers have been encouraging students to register. Once registered, all the information on the NEIU Web site becomes available in an easy-to-use format. Kim Tracey, head of Computing Services, hopes that NEIUport will be as “accessible to students as Yahoo and Google.”
While NEIUport has many advantages, there are still problems. New students this semester have only recently been put in the system.
Also, the NEIUport identity management is now handling Blackboard. All previous accounts have been removed, but the information on the accounts is kept so that when the student registers with NEIUport the information is transferred over.
According to Tracey, the hardest problem in setting up NEIUport had been, and still is, synchronizing both the e-mail and Blackboard accounts to one encompassing account and password.
Professors Ed Hunt and Ken Addison complained that a half a dozen of their students were only able to get on to Blackboard on Jan. 16, putting them behind in their lesson plans.
According to Tracy, NEIUport will eventually replace all administrative functions. “This should take about three years, but we are already into the first year. NEIUport will continue to grow as students send in their input on what should be included to make it more useful. One useful feature that will be added includes registering for classes online,” she said.
News on university events and links to other popular Web sites have been included in this portal. Students are able to log on to both their NEIU Webmail and Blackboard accounts from their NEIUport account. Within the site, students can join groups created by others and chat with other students.