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3.4.7.3. Website & Intranet
Tools Integration (Technology)
UOC has always run its own servers and is therefore responsible for a much wider scale of technology than an institution like the LSE. Since its early days, UOC’s technology has undergone an enormous evolution to what is now a highly differentiated system with the capacity to organize and enable the learning and work of more than 40,000 students, 1500 tutors, 160 professors and 503 administrative staff. UOC’s internet connection is setup as an autonomous system [i] which ensures availability and an aggregated bandwidth of 50 MBit through its various ISPs (UOC management 36).
UOC's website and large parts of the campus used static websites until quite recently. Since 2006 the website has been based on a content management system which highly facilitates the distribution of work between technical and editorial staff. The new website also offers new features such as RSS news feeds.
Current Practices (Use Cases)
The main pages of the website are offered in Catalonian, Spanish, and English. The website serves, as mentioned above, mainly two purposes: On the one hand, it provides access to marketing information such as the program of degrees and courses offered, on the other, it allows interested parties to read and print UOC’s thematic online journals and other publications.
UOC’s intranet – the virtual campus – provides access to community forums, news (including UOC’s approach and endeavours regarding the Bologna process), UOC’s self-developed email system, administrative services, access to the library, and of course to the virtual classrooms. One element that is perceived very positively is the presence of a photograph besides all messages that are send and received within the campus. The intranet is also the space for student participation in governance, but the usage statistics speak for themselves (see table 2). Generally there is not much activity except for the Law and Political Science forum which proves that the structure can work if it is promoted and utilized appropriately.
Table 3.4.2 - UOC Student Commission Communication Statistics
Additionally, there is a ‘corporate’ intranet, which contains information about internal university affairs, internal forums, as well as personalised services such as salary statements etc.. Most forums are rather inactive, but what is really in constant use is the UOC internal e-market, especially the housing (1002 messages in 16.5.07-17.11.06) as well as sports and IT equipment.
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[i] Which means that it manages its subsystem of IPs and their routing to the internet.
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