Students’ interests were honored with the relaunch of my.Fairfield’s landing page on Feb. 20 after holding various focus groups, altering the way users access information on the site.
Out of 100 students surveyed by The Mirror, 72 percent said that they like the feel of the new my.Fairfield as opposed to 28 percent that don’t. Fifty-nine percent of students said they find it easier to navigate than the old portal compared to 41 percent that don’t.
The new my.Fairfield landing page was announced to students several days in advance of its debut through Students 411, Twitter and Facebook, according to Chief Information Officer of Information and Technology Services Paige Francis.
“I like it,” said Matthew Rotandaro ’16. “I think it is a substantial improvement. It is more professional and more streamlined, modernized.”
Different from the companies Terminal Four and 160 Over 90 who created the new Fairfield website, CampusEAI Consortium was the organization that developed the new my.Fairfield portal.
CampusEAI services other universities in addition to Fairfield. They built the portal and mobile app to my.Fairfield, said Dr. Christopher Huntley, associate professor of information systems and operations management.
The planning for the new my.Fairfield portal started well over a year ago, but all that has changed, Francis said, is the home page.
Regional Manager in Account Management of CampusEAI Jasreen Kaur said, “Fairfield has been very methodical with they wanted on their website for the students.”
Student input was crucial in creating the new landing page for my.Fairfield, said Francis. Focus groups which varied in student participants, were held every few months where students gave their input for what they wanted to see on the portal.
Making the decision to change the my.Fairfield portal was based on the information students need. “Students are important,” said Lisa Nagy, Fairfield’s application integration specialist. “We all recognize here the importance of having students get the information they need.”
Tyler McClain, assistant director of student programs and leadership development, said that the staff wanted the landing page to be “student centric and dynamically engaging and things that students actually wanted to see or find quickly.”
But Mary Gaughan ‘16 thought differently. “It doesn’t do very much. [I] think they need help organizing all the links.”
New Student Leaders, students in first-year leadership programs, and students in career planning and the Office of the Dean of Students were able to see potential changes to the portal prior to the rest of the student body in order to make suggestions to the staff before the portal release.
Huntley said along with the new website, my.Fairfield has its problems, primarily the social media responsiveness on electronic devices. Because students use mobile devices, having the my.Fairfield portal available to them in every form, he said, is crucial to its success.
“Universities are hearing left and right that they have to make better use of social media. It is the way to engage students,” Huntley said. “It looks to me that this is something that isn’t quite done yet.”
One problem CampusEAI and Fairfield had with the portal in its early stages was adjusting the number of times students logged onto the site. “A lot of people using the portal were using it five to six times a day which was maxing out the system. We had to beef up the architecture to accommodate it,” she said.
Since its launch, Nagy and Francis have only received 10 student responses of the new my.Fairfield.
When asked if she submitted a response to the university, Gaughan said “I haven’t seen it. Honestly I don’t really care that much about it.” When asked the same question, Rotandaro said simply, “No, where is it?”
“There are around 3,300 undergraduates let alone graduates that land on that landing page and I got 10 responses in the last week. It’s not a very high percentage,” Francis said.
Students are encouraged to send feedback to the university feedback of the new landing page by logging on to my.Fairfield.edu.
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