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Case Western Reserve University: Expanding Access, Extending Boundaries
2/27/2003
By Lev Gonick and Ronald Ryan
Case Western Reserve University
(CWRU), located in Cleveland, Ohio, has adopted an ambitious technology goal.
Simply stated, the university's vision is "Technology everywhere, all the
time, any way you want it." The January 2003 deployment of MyCWRU—a
pioneering universitywide portal for students, faculty, and administrators—represents
a significant step toward achieving the university's progressive technology
vision.
MyCWRU is a third-generation, Web-based, interactive, and transaction-based framework. It is informed by the university's broad vision of striving to be the most efficiently run research university in the world and committed to the IT Services Division's No. 1 goal of customer service and satisfaction. The portal seeks to combine the philosophy that a university portal should mimic the study, work, and play triad of the typical university experience. As student focus groups consistently underscored, the framework needs to be fun, interactive, and customizable. In addition, it should provide access to services like drop/add, grades, and class assignments, as well as offer other services, such as information on movies available at local cinemas, just-in-time bus schedules, instant messaging, and video and music content.
Integrated Interests
The first public release of MyCWRU portal provides all members of the CWRU community
(students, faculty, staff, alumni, and even visitors) with a "single sign-on"
to their integrated teaching and learning interests, student services, and extra-curricular
aspects of campus life. Students, for example, can access their integrated e-mail,
daily calendar, grades, classes, and student services online. MyCWRU also enables
students to register for classes online. The portal and its underlying technology
populates the university course management tool using registration data, and
provides each student with a personalized, Oracle-based Web calendar derived
from course selections and other daily activities. In addition, the portal features
an e-mall that allows students to order goods and services—primarily technology-oriented
products—online and at significantly discounted prices.
The underlying technology in MyCWRU is a community source middleware effort called Campus Athena. The middleware, developed in part by Case Western Reserve University, is based on a Web services strategy for higher education. When a student authenticates himself in the log-in screen, credentials and authorizations are passed from the student registration system, to the course management system, to the calendaring product, and even to the Web mail service. For example: a student who enrolls in Engineering 131 will automatically find themselves in the Engineering 131 course management system; their calendar is now populated with 90-minute blocks scheduled on Tuesday and Thursday from 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.; assignments and class announcements are automatically posted to their personalized page; and a collaborative student e-mail is available for the small virtual group associated with the Engineering 131 course.
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