Originally published October 29, 2010
Executive Director of Computing Services Sandy Bury said students may see changes to MyBU within the next year.
Bury and a primary development and support team is working with Student Senate Technology Services and Affairs Chairman Jeremy Daniel to make MyBU a more useful tool for students.
“My goal is to get rid of things on the MyBU page,” Daniel said. “It is very clustered, and I want to get rid of the unnecessary things.”
Bury said they have met once with Daniel to discuss the possibility of major content shifts and are now working on implementing changes.
“We will work with Jeremy throughout the next academic year and we will be evaluating changes,” she said. “But we haven’t committed to any changes yet.”
Daniel, who also works at the Technology HelpDesk, recently distributed an online survey to students in his classes, on Student Senate, in his fraternity and other Technology HelpDesk consultants to determine what features students use on MyBU and what changes they want to see made.
Daniel said the survey results showed 51 percent of students who responded said they didn’t like MyBU.
He said he wants to work with computing services to consolidate all information already on the site and to minimize the day-to-day things that are cluttering the page.
“We want to create a MyBU 3 where all of the most important information is smack dab on the first page,” he said. “We also want to make the page so you would be able to move things around to your liking.”
Bury said they are only in the testing phase of the process and hope to make changes to MyBU available to students if not in January, then in the fall next year.
Although she said she is hesitant to make any changes at mid-year because she doesn’t want to remove functionality of the portal that people are currently using and familiar with.
“We don’t know how many other people are relying on things on MyBU that we might take away,” she said. “Jeremy did a good job with the survey and really surveyed a lot of people, but I am not convinced that the survey results are a representative for the whole student body.”
In addition to evaluating changes on the interface of MyBU, Bury said they may make a version upgrade from 2.6 to 3.2.
“A second server will offer more flexibility to make changes,” she said. “We may wait until making a version upgrade, potentially in the fall, before implementing any changes.”
Bury said as a service organization, computing services’ function is to serve students and they are very open to students and she is thrilled to work with Student Senate.
“This isn’t the first time student input has changed MyBU,” she said. “Two years ago we met with Patrick Ellis who was the Student Senate Technology and Student Affairs Chairman at the time.
“We revamped everything and came out with the second version of MyBU and now we are doing that again with Jeremy. We are very open to student input because it is primarily a student service,” Bury said.
To offer input and/or suggestions about what should be changed or implemented to MyBU email Daniel at jdaniel@mail.bradley.edu.
