Using the World Wide Web for Student and Alumni/ae Information Gathering

Peter Brauer
Duke University Division of Student Affairs


ABSTRACT

Various departments of the Division of Student Affairs at Duke University have the resposibility to collect and process information for undergraduate students for many of their functions. Two of the departments that are required to collect information from student and and respond in specific ways are the Student Development Housing Office (OSD) and the Career Development Center (CDC). The OSD has responsibility for the assignment of on-campus housing, and the CDC provides career and job search counseling. The greatest challenge in these processes has been to develop an equitable and efficient system to process this information and provide assistance to the students in a timely manner. The traditional approach has been the use of lengthy written surveys, counseling appointments, and other information gathering methods.

The Division of Student Affairs Office of Information Services (OIS), Housing Management, The Duke University Office of Information Technology and a team of students collaborated on development of a system to meet the needs of the Office of Student Development, while the OIS and the Career Development Center worked together to improve and expand on the existing Career Development Center website known as CareerNet .

Utilizing the Web's potential as both a tool for the dissemination and the collection of information to meet the needs of the Office of Student Development, we enabled the undergraduate population on our two campuses to complete the 1996 housing survey process on-line. This on-line collection of data eliminated re-entry error and provided a learning experience by developing the student's Web use skills. It also saved innumerable hours of time on the administrative side of the equation by eliminating the chore of direct data entry.

New services that are being offered by the expanded Careernet Site include contact searching, which allows current Duke Students to identify Duke alumni/ae that are working in specific fields and that are willing counsel students in their career choices, the ability for alumni/ae to update their own personal information dynamically over the web, and for the student to actually set up interviews with recruiters included credential and resume service. References and appointment scheduling are also now available on-line.

Keywords: Student Affairs, Alumni, Macintosh, Perl, CGI, Database


Introduction

The Division of Student Affairs at Duke University has recently begun to use the world wide web to collect and disseminate information from and to students and alumni/ae of the university. This use of the web has resulted in a more successful implementation of programs, including our annual undergraduate student housing project, and our already proven alumni/ae job tracking and reference system. These successes have led to the planning and hopeful implementation of other new systems. These include a format that will allow for the use of relational databases containing public information regarding students on campus, and confidential information from offices such as Counseling and Psychological Services and the Career Development Center. Examples of the of this information would be personal demographic information (public) and counseling notes (private).

Rapid Application Development for the World Wide Web

In developing these systems we have utilized many of the concepts that are central to the model of Rapid Application Development (RAD) and Internet/Intranet Rapid Application Development (IRAD). The core idea of RAD is to rapidly develop software and/or hardware solutions to a specific problem. This is instead of trying to develop applications and systems that are in the more standard "monolithic" application model. This seems to be especially effective when developing applications for use on the web. Since technology is evolving so rapidly, projects must be delivered quickly in order to make use of the latest innovations available.

Another tenet of RAD is that products should be planned, developed and delivered following very aggressive timelines. Application development should e categorized into 8, 12 and 16 week projects based on their complexity and scope. If a viable solution cannot be developed to fit one of these timelines, we have found that it probably is not a useful solution. It is also important to educate the client that since the technology is advancing so quickly, their applications will most likely have a very short shelf life and would need replacement anyway. Completed applications run the risk of becoming dated by the time they are needed again, specifically those types of systems that have been developed for the purpose of survey data collection or test implementation.

Student versus Staff and Alumni/ae Deployment of Systems

We have found it is important to keep in mind the differences in technological capabilities between the majority of the student body our staff and alumni/ae. Most of the current undergraduate students here at Duke have by this time in their life had ample exposure to the concepts related to personal computing and the world wide web, email and related technologies. It is this familiarity with the technology that can cut both ways however. Students are able to check our systems out completely and are quick decide what it is boring, not useful, and what systems work.

Staff and alumni/ae are not all as familiar or comfortable as many of the students are with these same technologies and generally have a higher suspicion and lower comfort level regarding the technology involved. There are also issues such as legacy systems and a sense of history to deal with when you find yourself providing a technology replacement for a system that may have been inefficient but still worked. Many times the toughest obstacle to overcome is the "because we have always done it that way" mindset.

It is meeting the needs of these two groups that the programmer/developer must keep in mind when designing Web-based systems for information gathering. Interfaces need to be graphically interesting and fresh in order to grab the attention of the experienced, while at the same time being much more user friendly and understandable "newbies."

Tested Technologies that Transfer to the Web

Adam Curry, Chief Technology Officer and Founder of Think New Technologies, Inc., Metaverse, Inc., sees databases as the "stealth technology" of the web. "They are easy to manage and can produce multimedia or drive interactive results for any application." It is this technology, the database, that currently represents the greatest potential when prepared for and delivered to the web.

Database technology is one of the oldest uses of computers still being used in almost its original form. Studies have shown that most companies spend up to 90% of entering data into their databases compared to 10% on retrieval. This does not need to be the case. One of the greatest time consumers in database management is the necessary constant verification of the data in the file, both upon creation and change of the data. If the majority of this burden can be shifted to the individuals to which the data directly relates, then a large portion of the time spent in data entry can be saved. Instead it is through the effective use of available web technologies that new record creation can take place.

Another tested technology that can be used effectively in these types of projects is that of forms. Forms originated as a way for a user to input specific data to a web site, or respond to a specific HTML page. These data were then processed by some type of a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script allowing for data processing across platforms, and then the input was discarded. New technologies now allow for forms to be used to collect the data, but instead of processing simple scripts and returning computations on the data, it allows for direct data manipulation and response to take place at a much higher level of sophistication.

One more tested technology that can be used in these projects is that of frames. While most of the early browsers did not support frames, all browsers in current widespread release now do. The greatest area for use of frames technology is the ability that it provides for keeping a certain amount of the browser window set aside for instructions or directions. This static area can contain information pertinent to the entire site, without requiring a lot of extra pages or line of HTML.

New Technologies for Integration

Newer technologies that can be integrated quickly to these types of sites deal primarily with different forms of multimedia. By including sound or video, you can quickly include instructions, directions, or other "live" information to go along with your data gathering. This combination can help to cut down on errors from = confusion or missed directions.

Combining multimedia with frames and forms will result in a lively and interesting site that still allows you to gather or spread the information that you need. Adding stimulation from a visual or audio perspective will make your site that much more interesting.

Real World Application of this Technology

Within the Division of Student Affairs at Duke University we have already implemented three different systems, and are completing Beta-testing of a fourth system using the web as a data-gathering resource. We also have made use of two these discussed technologies in doing so. Specifically we have made use of custom written scripts created in MacPERL containing HTML and CGI code in the creation of the Duke OnLine Housing Survey and the Division of Student Affairs Employee Survey, and Tango for FileMaker Pro 3.0 and FileMaker Pro for the creation and maintenance of the Information Services = Inventory and Service Request System.

The OnLine Housing survey and the Division Employee Survey have their advantages in that since they were created using MacPERL, is it the scripts themselves contain the HTML code. This makes them easily portable across server platform allowing for rapid adaptation and deployment in multiple systems. Since both of these systems are primarily intended for use as data-collection tools they are not tied to complex databases forcing them to remain on their original development platform. Furthermore, since the code for the CGI portions of the systems provide similar functions for both applications, we were able to reuse the code in a "code object" format. This has been useful in adhering to the RAD and IRAD concepts.

The Information Services systems and the systems that are currently being created for the Career Development Center are more complex in that they are tied to a specific data source. In this case they are tied to databases already existing in an application called FileMaker Pro from Claris Software. A major advantage to this application is it extremely powerful but is very easy to use. This allows for intricate manipulation of the data by the customer directly without creating the need for a dedicated Database Administrator on staff. TangoEditor from Everyware Software provides a "drag-and-drop" solution to creating an interface between the Web and your specific database, while allowing for a significant amount of custom HTML code to be added. Additionally, Tango allows for the creation on what they call "HTML Snippets" that are segments or pages of often-used HTML code and tags that can be dragged directly to the page from a library. This makes it extremely useful for RAD and IRAD. There is a version of this application called Butler, which will interface with an SQL database and server architecture for those data-sources that are much more complex. This becomes more important as data-warehousing becomes more widespread.

Challenges and Areas for Development

We identified several areas in need of development in our use of these technologies. The first, and greatest, challenge was creating a robust and powerful enough server to handle the volume of hits, and size of the files that were being transferred. After an initial examination of the Sun Netra Server (a Sparc 5 running Sun's Netscape Enterprise server), we decided to go with a Macintosh 8100/80 running WebStar and WebStar/SSL versions 1.2.5. This decision was made primarily due to the low cost and availability of the hardware, as well as the much broader familiarity our staff had with the platform.

It also allowed for very rapid implementation of the Web Site itself saving at least eight weeks of development time spent on the project instead of needing to learn the operations of the server. Finally, this office was much more flexible due to the availability of other Macintosh computers. We were able to configure these machines as a RAIC very easily when hit volume required it.

We also identified the need to better manage our timing of our surveys. While previously assigning a single deadline for a survey worked since every one had their own copy, this was not the case on the web. On the web, everyone accessed a single copy of the survey. Their answers that created a unique page, and this oversight did result in several "server busy" messages. Ways we solved these problems included breaking up the size of the questionnaire pages and the introduction of Asynchronous versions of the CGIs (ACGIs) allowing for concurrent uses of the same script.

Finally, our last major challenge has been informing the public about these new systems and how to access them. While there has been an emerging standard in the presentation of URLs, and search engines have gotten better, it is still important to let users know where to find these new systems. This single error, not knowing the proper URL was the second greatest source of calls.

Conclusion

It is safe to say that the web is going to continue to grow and evolve, and new technologies will continue to emerge. As developers it is our responsibility to stay abreast of the evolving technologies and not only apply them to new problems, but to make sure that we are still able to use the technologies that we are already invested in. It is also important that technologies that we develop remain accessible to the public. One of the great gifts of the web is way that it has opened up computers and made information more readily available to everyone.

By developing systems that allow us to share our internal information with the public, we make sure that the information we have is relevant and correct. This represents one of the greatest potentials for the Internet and the World Wide Web.


Peter Brauer
Manager, Office of Information Services
Duke University, Division of Student Affairs
103B Flowers Building, Box 90951
Durham, NC 27708
pbrauer@stuaff.duke.edu
http://www.stuaff.duke.edu


COPYRIGHT

Peter Brauer © 1996. The author assigns to the University of New Brunswick and other educational and non-profit institutions a non exclusive license to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in f ull and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author also grants a non-exclusive license to the University of New Brunswick to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers, and for the docu ment to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the author.

N.A.WEB 96 - The Second International North America World Wide Web Conference http://www.unb.ca/web/wwwdev/ University of New Brunswick.