Designing portals : opportunities and challenges

Portals present unique strategic challenges in the academic environment. Their conceptualization and design requires the input of campus constituents who seldom interact and whose interests are often opposite. The implementation of a portal requires a coordination of applications and databases controlled by different campus units at a level that may never before have been attempted at the institution. Building a portal is as much about constructing intra-campus bridges as it is about user interfaces and content. This publication discusses the current status of portals in higher education by providing insight into the role portals play in an institution's business and educational strategy, by taking the reader through the processes of conceptualization, design, and implementation of the portals (in different stages of development) at major universities and by offering insight from three producers of portal software systems in use at institutions of higher learning and elsewhere.