‘MyIUP’ to replace URSA portal

Fall semester, 2013, Indiana University of Pennsylvania will be officially changing it’s portal system from University Records and Systems Assistant (URSA) to “MyIUP” portal.

The change of portal to “MyIUP” was due to a desire to create a ‘one-stop-shop,’ which is the growing trend in portals throughout many western Pennsylvanian universities.  

The ‘one-stop-shop’ refers to a feature where only one sign-on step is necessary for features such as email, registration and more.

“The change in portal came about because there’s been desire in the university community to come up with something that is more easy to use than URSA, that has additional functionality like targeted announcements, for example,” Eric Barker (IUP Enrollment, Management and Communications Division) said, “can have their own space and then you can have virtual wikis and blogs and
photo-sharing and your own piece of the portal.”

While the design is currently set up so that it is the same way for students, faculty and staff, “MyIUP” will be more personalized.

“Right now the website is the same for everybody,” Barker said, “whereas for the portal we’re going to have
customized announcements.”

Throughout November, IUP staff responsible for this project have been hosting info-gathering workshops, asking students and faculty what they want their future portal features to include.   

“We’re meeting with students and staff and employees to ask ‘What do you want in the portal?’” Barker said. 

In December, the design of the portal will be in the works. 

However, staff working on the portal will be holding additional workshops for students and faculty to ask opinions on how the design and lay out should be organized.

After the design step, staff will then test out “MyIUP” before going live in April for the registering freshmen, and in August for the other returning students.

“Anything you can do with URSA today you can do with the portal but it’s going to be a lot easier to use,” Barker said.

 “We want to give student groups the opportunity to have their own piece of the portal.”

Barker also explained how the new portal will have a social networking tool that allows students to ‘friend’ their professors and other students for more advanced communicating with assignments and activities.

“It’s going to be an exciting thing for the university,” Barker said.

 “Eventually everyone’s going to have to use it because we really want to turn off and disable URSA.”