Sharepoint in academia
It's a new year, the students are heading back and everything is in place, working and ready for the rush that's about to happen. For some, the summer is a time to relax but in academia it's often the busiest time of the year.
So, I know many are planning the next tranche of projects and many of these will be around portals, learning gateways, personalised learning, e-folios etc....and I know many of these will be based around Microsoft SharePoint as the solution platform.
We will soon have web part integration with BlackBoard and WebCT. We have contracted Tier2 to write the web parts for WebCT and they showed me the screen-shots the other day and this is looking good. The next step is for Tier2 to partner with a university to put the finishing touches to the web parts and then these will be made available to all through a programme similar to the shared source initiative.
Another initiative that I'm pleased to support is the UK's SharePoint Academic user community. This was formed as a user group for higher and further education institutions to collaborate on their development projects for SharePoint and was initiated by Sheffield Hallam University. This is mostly based around a SharePoint extranet site hosted by Microsoft so the members can hold on-line discussions, post documents, share ideas, ask questions and provide general information that they think will be useful to the community at large. At the last count there are 84 members from over 30 institutions. Earlier this year, the group met in Sheffield and there were around 30 people present for an engaging set of presentations, talks and discussions from members of the group, partners and Microsoft. They are hoping to have another meeting before too long.
For information about joining the user group please contact me.
