Duke Today Launches New Student Section

Duke Today's newest section, which went live today, is part of sweeping changes designed to provide Duke University students with more accessible and timely information for both their academic and personal lives.

Duke Today/Students joins MY DUKE and a revised Student Affairs website, both of which went live earlier this week. The three initiatives will coordinate student communications from various university offices, improve student access to key transactional activities such as ACES and Sakai, take advantage of new social media and better connect students to the wider university community.

"Websites are no longer the singular tool for getting thoughts and information out into the world at large, but they still have an important role to play," said Chris Heltne, director of communications for The Office of Student Affairs. "We designed these sites to be a resource students will count on to find whatever they need, when they need it."

The Duke Today/Students section will be edited by Susan Kauffman, director of communications for the Office of Undergraduate Education. It adds to current Duke Today sections on News, Opinions and Working@Duke, which were designed for the campus community as a whole and employees more specifically.  "Students didn't want to sort through a lot of information that didn't directly apply to them," she said.

The three new sites will make it easier for the university to share information with its students, Kauffman said. "Our goal is to break down silos and communicate the most important messages no matter where Duke students are landing online."  Each of the three sites has an important niche to fill, she said.

MY DUKE, edited by Deborah Johnson, assistant vice provost for undergraduate education, is a student gateway to online services, from course discussions through Sakai to Duke Card transactions and webmail. It includes links to more than a dozen sites identified as essential by student focus groups, Johnson said. These include a bus locator; the DukeList website for classified ads and volunteer and job opportunities; and easy access to dining points, FLEX, ePrint, FLUNCH and Inferno account balances.

The site replaces the DukePass portal, which was created in 2004. MY DUKE, while streamlined from the old DukePass portal, will meet student needs more effectively in large part because of its coordination with the other two sites, Johnson said.

"After surveying a number of undergraduate students, we realized that we didn't need something as 'heavyweight' as the DukePass software to provide what our students wanted and that we needed to support the increasing use of mobile devices," Johnson said. "We also wanted to ensure we continued to have a central Duke site where we could communicate and provide easy access to interesting, important and urgent information for students as well as supporting the Duke Alert emergency notification system."

The revised Student Affairs site provides extensive news, social media and communications from the more than a dozen units in Student Affairs, said Heltne. There also is space for student voices on student affairs issues.

As with MY DUKE, students worked closely with Student Affairs staff in designing the site. "We heard from students that we should make it easy for students and other audiences to follow information of interest to them in the way they like to receive it," Heltne said. "And they wanted us to make it easy for them to share that information via their preferred method.

"I think the new website achieves that goal, as well as better connecting students with the broader university community."

Duke Today/Students will be the place where students can find university news and information of interest to them, especially "news you can use." 

"Now when the Transportation office issues parking changes or the Police Department releases safety updates or a really prominent speaker is coming to campus, we have a place to post in one place that students can easily find," Kauffman said. "In addition to the practical news, we also have a place to highlight stories from around campus about student accomplishments. We will also feature some student blogs to provide greater visibility to what students are writing about."

(You may also notice a change in the Duke Today banner, launched in conjunction with the new site. The same search, archive and weather information is still there but with a design that makes the information stand out better.)

All three sites are "works in progress," said the editors, who will continue gathering student feedback and suggestions.