Portals - Are We Going In Or Out?

Sandy von Allmen, Training & Publications, University of Tasmania Library [HREF1], GPO Box 252-25, Hobart, Tasmania, 7001. Sandy.vonAllmen@utas.edu.au
Kenneth R Deans [HREF2], Senior Lecturer, Department of Marketing [HREF3], University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand, 9001. kdeans@commerce.otago.ac.nz
Izabella Bartosiewicz, Teaching & Learning Strategy Development Team, RMIT University Library [HREF4], GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne, Victoria, 3001. iza.bartosiewicz@rmit.edu.au

Abstract

Web portals have been around for several years and yet there is still a considerable amount of confusion surrounding this technology and its potential. In Higher Education institutions of Australia and New Zealand in particular, the interest in portals has been fairly minimal with less than ten institutions actually adopting portals as their campus-wide information and service delivery system (we specifically dealt with university-wide portals and were not limited to library portals).

To ascertain levels of adoption, future plans as well as canvass opinions about a number of portal 'issues', (e.g. pros, cons, costs and time-scales) we sent an electronic questionnaire to all 51 members of the Council of the Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT). A response rate of 45% was achieved.

Key results suggests that adoption levels are likely to change as a growing number of our tertiary institutions embark on the often difficult task of deciding on the appropriate solution that will suit their often unique requirements.

Introduction

What's this thing called a portal?

Ask any random sample of web users, designers and managers to define a 'Web portal' and the responses will vary enormously along a continuum that starts at 'a simple doorway or gateway to information' and extends to 'a starting point for all web access'. (We used the term 'Web portal' for the purpose of our questionnaire, however, for this paper we will simply use the term 'portal') Looney and Lyman (2000) succinctly describe the functionality of portals as follows:

"... portals gather a variety of useful information resources into a single, 'one-stop' Web page, helping the user to avoid being overwhelmed by 'infoglut' or feeling lost on the Web."

Having defined what a portal is, the next issue is the difference between a home page and a portal as the previous definitions could equally describe a static home page. At the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking (CREN) TechTalk "Preparing for Campus Portals" [HREF 5], (March 2000), guest experts Geist and Wagner discussed this issue in some depth. An excerpt from Geist's presentation highlights some of the key differences:

"... a simple web page homepage is sort of a pre-portal stage, a little bit smaller unit than a portal. I think a portal has features on it that enable people to not just aggregate information, which you could see on a homepage, but adds another dimension to the information . . . . being able to pull in communities that are interesting to you, pull in information and the ability to customize and have services and interactions with people and with information. And those aren't features of your typical homepage."

Considering tertiary institutions in particular, there have been several steps involved in moving from a simple homepage of links to a portal. In the mid-1990s institutional websites basically consisted of a presence created by administrative units and academic departments simply listing links to formatted documents e.g. policies, procedures and course syllabi. It wasn't until the late 1990's that campus websites were restructured to focus on unique user groups, such as students, staff and visitors. (Jacobson, 2000) During the CREN Techtalk [HREF 5], Geist uses the example of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) which has a one-stop-shop for students. RIT's Virtual Union [HREF 6] is an aggregate of resources that incorporates some interesting features, such as the RITCam, a link to the streaming RIT radio station and sports information. She goes on to say that they are currently looking at commercial portals to move to the next level and truly create student life on the website.

Many institutions have quickly recognised the powerful and transformational potential of portals and have developed and implemented their own. (Katz, 2000) Several United States universities shared their experiences at EDUCAUSE 2000 [HREF 7]. The choices of portal software - commercial, open source, or custom-built - will be addressed later in this paper.

The evolution of the portal

There is no doubt that portals are one of the hottest concepts on the Web today, although there is some dispute as to what could be classified as the first generation of portals. Most people believe that search engines were the first portals. (Lynch, 1998) However, Howard Strauss, during the CREN TechTalk Event "What Is a Portal, Anyway?" [HREF 8], (January 2000) claims:

"…portals really started out with ISP's, the Internet Service Providers like AOL and Prodigy and that bunch of folks who had to give you some kind of thing beyond what you could find yourself on the Web. So what they did is they gave you some kind of search of content to help you find your way around, so you would use them as sort of a gateway to the Web. And they were sort of the early portals."

One of the first search engines was Yahoo!, which started life in late 1993 as "Jerry Yang's Guide to WWW", which was followed by others like Altavista, Excite, Open Text, Magellan, Infoseek, and Lycos. They were also competing against the ISPs, who were offering internet access and access to a wide range of information. In the battle for popularity, most of these sites realised the more features they offered the greater possibility users would stay at their sites longer. (Kleinschmidt and Goodman, 2000)

Strauss, in the "What Is a Portal, Anyway?" TechTalk [HREF 8], described these as "big horizontal malls" that try to provide the user with information about absolutely everything they could possibly want. Strauss refers to them as commercial portals, but they are also known as consumer portals, horizontal portals or mega-portals. Every user who enters the site sees the same thing, but they are able to personalise it to some degree. Personalising a website means that you can 'make it work the way you want to', for example subscribe / unsubscribe from channels (small sections of the page that contain links or related items), change screen layout and colour / graphic scheme.

Horizontal portals have broad appeal and they are the most common type in existence, however only the 'big three' - Yahoo!, AOL and MSN - remain substantially in the portal game. (Zaret, 2000) The growth area is now in the vertical or niche portals. Kleinschmidt and Goodman (2000) define vertical portals as:

". . . what we might have called web sites in the past. Today, however, certain category-leading web sites in a given topical category, or catering to a given demographic, are such significant players that many call them portals. The list of very popular and economically significant vertical portals is growing rapidly."

Strauss, in the "What Is a Portal, Anyway?" TechTalk [HREF 8] explains how vertical portals can also use customisation. A single log-in is used to authenticate to the system, so it can recognise who you are and what your role is. When you log-on, whether you are faculty, a student, or staff, the system makes information specific to your role available to you and determines what options and privileges are available to you.

Vertical portals can also be clustered together and called a 'network'. About.com is comprised of some 700 'verticals' and bills itself as the world's largest 'network of vertical sites led by expert human guides'. It is suggested that in this instance, portal may not be the most descriptive term. (Kleinschmidt and Goodman, 2000)

Portal Attributes

What makes portals different from home pages, subject gateways and directories is the fact that they have been designed with flexibility in mind. They make only the necessary assumptions as to what the users' needs and preferences could be (customisation), leaving the rest of decisions to the users themselves (personalisation).

One can certainly question if delivery of information based on the role or the category of users is not too restrictive and presumptuous. For example, it would be difficult to assign a single role to a person who belongs to a number of categories, such as a staff member who is also a student of the same institution. Some consider customisation as unnecessary 'spoon-feeding', while others voice privacy concerns. Jakob Nielsen takes this argument even further by claiming that "Web personalization is much over-rated and mainly used as a poor excuse for not designing a navigable website". [HREF 9] (Please note that Nielsen defines personalisation as "based on some form of model of that user's needs", which is what this paper defines as customisation). He refers to the results of testing of sites with customisation where users were not pleased at being stereotyped while their needs were 'second-guessed' by the computer.

It is true that the information needs of an individual may vary from visit to visit or that they may not bother taking the time to set up their personal profiles. However, even Nielsen admits that customisation is useful, even if applications he suggests are somehow limiting.

Customisation in portals is not a 'remedy' for poorly designed websites but rather a timely successor of a 'one size fits all' approach to Web-based information delivery. It creates a responsive and dynamic environment where users are encouraged to define their requirements so they can access information and resources they need, while still giving them the option to search or browse the entire site if and when they wish to. It also stimulates community building by facilitating collaboration and communication in academic, administrative and social contexts. From an institution's point of view, by offering a wide range of features and tools and consolidating administrative and academic systems, portals are equipped to deal with the complexity of higher education institutions more successfully than the usual assortment of websites and disparate legacy systems.

Table 1. A summary of the major attributes of portals

Portal Software

Although a comprehensive study of individual systems and an in-depth comparison of the various features they claim to offer extends beyond the scope of this paper, a number of major players in the delivery of portal applications have been identified. These are summarised in Table 2. Commercial portal software and Table 3. Open source portal software located at the end of the paper.

Commercial vs. custom-built solutions

Tertiary institutions in Australia and New Zealand have not been pressured to adopt a commercial solution for their portal to the same degree as their counterparts in the United States. Most likely reasons could be that portals are still considered a low priority by most institutions and that the providers of local commercial portal applications are not as numerous while overseas offerings are not always appropriate or affordable.

Commercial solutions, particularly if a hosting option is available, can be attractive to smaller institutions, even if the trade-off is the presence of advertising banners and a loss of privacy of staff and students. If a license can be purchased to avoid the advertising, the price is usually out of reach for institutions operating on smaller budgets. For example, Campus Pipeline's fee for a banner-free license can reach up to $800,000, however fees are waved if advertising is accepted. [HREF 10]

Although Higher Education institutions in Australia and New Zealand are somewhat behind their American counterparts in exploring the benefits of portals, the results from the survey conducted by the authors of this paper suggest that even if the commercial solutions are much more popular within the 'under consideration' group, the institutions who have successfully implemented a portal chose a custom-built solution or a hybrid, particularly where commercial applications, such as Blackboard, have been used to take over the task of managing the online teaching and learning.

Considerable resources have been invested by the institutions who have developed and implemented custom-built portals and the following list identifies Australian leaders in this area:

• Monash University: myMonash [http://www.its.monash.edu.au/services/flt/portal/]
• Southern Cross University: MySCU showcase [http://www.scu.edu.au/showcase/main.html]
• University of Canberra: OPUS (Online Portal for University Staff) [http://www.canberra.edu.au/Staff.html] and
  OSIS (Online Student Information System) [http://www.canberra.edu.au/cc/osis.html]
• University of Southern Queensland: USQconnect [http://www.usq.edu.au/usqconnect/brochure/]
• University of Sydney: USYDnet [http://intranet.usyd.edu.au]
• University of Queensland: mySI-net [http://www.sinet.uq.edu.au] and
  my.UQ [http://my.uq.edu.au/]
• University of Wollongong: SOLS [http://www.uow.edu.au/student/sols/]

Collaborative projects

The Java in Administration Special Interest Group (JA-SIG) Portal Project sets an excellent example of collaboration that can successfully compete with commercial providers, while offering a flexible and workable solution. With a membership of well over a hundred institutions (both commercial and higher education) it has developed an open source uPortal, based on Java technology, which has been adopted by numerous institutions across the United States, including Yale and Princeton. [HREF 11]

Although the focus of this paper is university-wide portals, it is interesting to note that there are currently nineteen Australian universities working together with the National Library of Australia on a collaborative project. The Australian Research Library Network (ARLIN) Portal Project is centred at La Trobe University. Funding has recently been approved by the Australian Research Council (ARC) for the first phase of this project - the development of a pilot system using portal technologies.

In order to gain an insight to the number of portals in existence and the perceived pros and cons, the authors recognised to need to undertake some primary research. Unlike secondary sources, this would generate data unique to our own requirements.

Methodology

Introduction

There has been much discussion amongst social scientists with regard to the merits of quantitative versus qualitative data and their usefulness in advancing new concepts and describing prevailing conditions. Whilst writers such as Deshpande (1983) state that:

"the quantitative paradigm is said to have a positivistic, . . . objective, outcome-oriented, and natural science world view. In contrast the qualitative paradigm is said to subscribe to a phenomenological . . . holistic, subjective . . . world view."

Phenomenologists posit that quality can be better than quantity and that a large sample does not necessarily yield more information. The authors in this study recognise the relative merits of both approaches and adopted a mixed research methodology.

Research data

There are four main sources of data available to the social researcher. They are:

1. Secondary sources;
2. Observation of the sample;
3. Conducting of interviews (individual or group);
4. The questionnaire (standard mail, electronic or Delphi).

A useful balance may be struck by using more than one method, as they are not 'mutually exclusive'. For the purposes of this research the authors used secondary sources and an electronically administered questionnaire. A fairly rigorous web-based search produced useful background descriptive information as well as some useful pointers that assisted with the construction of the main research tool - the questionnaire. Compared to other methods (mail, interview, focus group, Delphi) an electronic survey has the lowest cost per response. The cost of reaching a respondent in Queensland, Australia was identical to the cost of reaching a respondent in Otago, New Zealand - zero! Using this technology, accurate mail-out and follow-up reminders are possible, as is the personalisation of correspondence. There is however the drawback that respondents, particularly those being targeted in the current survey, suffer from over-exposure to electronic questionnaires (Deans & Adam, 1999) and may be less likely to cooperate and respond. Additionally there are a number of generic disadvantages associated with questionnaires:

1. Cannot cater for a broad spectrum of intelligence;
2. Lack the personal introduction afforded by the personal interview;
3. No guarantee that respondents will answer the questions in the preferred order;
4. Intended respondents may pass the questionnaire on to someone else.

On balance however an electronic questionnaire suited the research and was the method used. A decision was made to contact all 51 members of the Council of the Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) [HREF 12]. In research terms this constituted a census rather than a survey and so issues of representation and probability / non-probability sampling errors were not relevant.

The questionnaire contained a total of 14 questions split in to 3 sections. Section A of the questionnaire requested background information to ascertain the respondent's level of portal involvement. Section B addressed Features, Functionality and Related Issues while the final Section C sought opinions about Future developments. The questionnaire was sent out on a Thursday and the one and only reminder sent one week later. The exact timings were chosen to coincide with perceived work patterns. A total of 23 responses (45%) were received with all replies being usable though varying in the depth of data provided. The results are discussed in the next section.

Results

The following section presents some summary statistics, cross tabulations and qualitative responses. We have tried to provide an overview rather than an exhaustive report on all questions and possible x-tabs. It is hoped that this will offer a useful insight and stimulate debate and discussion at the conference.

Does your institution use portals on its site?

It is interesting to note that only 17% of respondents gave a definite 'No' to having a portal and that 83% either have one, are partly committed to one or considering one in the future.

Figure 1. The number of institutions currently using / not using / considering a portal.

Reasons for introducing / maintaining a portal

Exploring this further we asked respondents what were the main reasons for maintaining or considering a web based portal. It was encouraging to note that the majority of comments were of an 'improved service' nature as well as integration of online information.

• Provide a better service to students and staff
• To enable high degree of customisation
• Simplicity of use, consistency & easy authentication
• Integrated access to services and information
• Provide secure environment of personal value
• Provide centre-piece for online services for internal use
• To increase CRM as part of service offer
• Better communication

Reasons for not introducing / maintaining a portal

When asked for reasons to reject portals respondents seemed to be split between issues of funding, priority and the availability of suitable off the shelf software.

• Still under consideration
• Still no commercially viable portal
• Limited resources
• Low priority

Do you have portal 'development information' on your Website?

This question was asked to ascertain how many institutions who had or were considering a portal actually made that intent known to their client base - students, staff, perspective students, and external visitors / partners / interested parties and organisations.

The results would suggest that development work and intentions are not considered suitable or appropriate for a public consumption.

Figure 2. The number of institutions who display information about their portal development on their websites.

Use of portal vs. software used / planned

Essentially we were interested in whether suitable software was a major consideration given the high cost of developing in-house systems. It seems that those with a portal already may have been 'forced' down the custom-made route by lack of suitable commercial software while those considering a portal seem to prefer commercial software.

Figure 3. A comparison between institutions with / considering a portal and their choice of custom-made or commercial software.

Future portal development timeline

These results suggest that there is an air of optimism in the adoption of portal technology and that the majority of development work is likely to take place in the next 12 months.

Figure 4. Predicted timeline for future portal development.

Roles supported by portal

This question sought to ascertain the extent to which institutions were internally and externally focussed. As can be seen, there is a tendency to support and service on campus clients more than off campus.

Figure 5. Different roles supported by portals.

Perceived benefits of portals

Self explanatory, what we have presented here are summary comments as well as verbatim quotes.

• More students working off campus
• Enhances online experience for users
• Improved client services
• Easier navigation for students
• Secure environment with demonstrated student value
• Higher level of access to some online services
• Increase awareness in staff of the usefulness of online environments
• Personal data capture and subsequent customisation (future)
• Reduce "Where is . . . ?" calls to the service desk

Perceived problems of portals

As above, we have reported qualitative commentary.

• Technical issues e.g. PHP / Oracle & other systems (eg.  student interfaces)
• Load, load & load!
• Perceived by staff as a 'student offering'
• Authentication
• Slow uptake by staff
• Lack of 24/7
• Insufficient online data to perform some functions
• ISP proxies change IP addresses for each request
• Skill deficits
• Re-authentication when using multiple systems

Future institutional directions / plans

Given the potential of portals and the considerable advantages they offer over existing technology, respondents asked to indicate the future direction of their institution with reference to improving or adopting a portal system.

• Customisation
• Improved integration with some existing systems
• Improved usability
• Provide a total teaching environment
• May switch to iPlanet
• Extending user profiles based on user-supplied information and usage patterns
• Improved focusing of channels to profiles
• Easier to make user generated channels
• Do more work with an admin channel
• Provide a total teaching environment
• Develop a higher minimum browser requirement
• Leveraging the virtues of an intelligent directory services network

Forward to the Future - Respondents' Opinions

We asked about the future to give respondents the chance to think outside the box and perhaps consider 'blue sky' developments. The points below are indicative of that attitude as well as offering some more conservative viewpoints.

• Clients will have option to do all business transaction via portal
• Portal technology & personalisation VITAL to next-generation collaboration tools
• Having a portal for people changes what they want and how they want to use it
• Portal needs to be cheap
• Need data feeds from internal and external sources, mapping to personal profiles, drill down, searchable archives, unstructured data stores, personal websites and group collaboration tools
• Many commercial portal vendors have flawed business cases. Many commercial portals are not portals but front ends to applications
• Enterprises need a single portal and most vendor application front end 'portals' must be able to integrate into this
• Need to reduce and replace e-mail, which requires new tools and significant culture changes
• Portals are a key element of this (previous point) infrastructure, and provide the 'glue' to hold it together

Conclusions

There is a growing interest in portal technology amongst the Higher Education institutions in Australia and New Zealand. The slow rate of adoption so far could be attributed to the confusion surrounding portal technology and its potential advantages, unavailability of appropriate funding and a low priority placed on such developments. The survey demonstrates, however, that there is a growing awareness as to the benefits that portal technology can bring to the way Higher Education institutions manage and deliver their services. This changing perception could be due to the several successfully developed portals in Australian universities and libraries. Inadequate funding and lack of resources such as time and technical expertise are of major concern, which could explain why most of the survey participants are considering adopting a commercial solution rather than trying to custom-build one.

The results of the survey show that not many institutions allow (or have any intention of allowing) visitors to access their portal, which makes it difficult for others to become familiar with the interface and functionality of various systems and compare the solutions before embarking on this venture themselves. In addition to this, the developmental information about these projects is not often made available to the public. Sharing of knowledge about the issues that arose during the process, difficulties encountered and resources required within a 'local context' would be most helpful to those just starting out.

Collaborative projects, such as the JA-SIG Portal Project, could be a possible solution for our Higher Education institutions if they are to avoid commercialism, compromising functionality and the privacy of their users. It is therefore encouraging to see collaborative ventures such as the ARLIN Portal Project being undertaken in Australia. Such projects rely on the willingness to share information, expertise and resources for the benefit of all participating institutions, their staff and customers and the final product is more likely to meet the unique requirements of educational institutions than any of the commercial solutions currently available.

Table 2. Commercial portal software

Table 3. Open source portal software

Questionnaire

Section A: Background

1. Does your institution use Web portals on it's site?
[ ] Yes. Is there a link from your Uni home page or what is it's URL:
__________________________________________
[ ] No, but under consideration.
[ ] No. Please answer question 2 and then skip to Section C

2. What were the main reasons for introducing / not introducing Web Portals?
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________

3. How long have you had one operational?
______ years ______ months

4. Are you using or intending to use commercial software or a custom-made solution?
[ ] commercial. which package? _____________
[ ] custom-made

5. Do you have information on your web site about the development of your Web Portal?
[ ] Yes _____ URL:__________________________________________
[ ] No

5a. What resources will be required for future development and implementation?
__________________________________________
__________________________________________

5b. What is the timescale?
__________________________________________
__________________________________________

Section B: Feature, Functionality & Related Issues

6. What customisation or 'roles' are supported?
[ ] Current student
[ ] Staff
[ ] Prospective student or other external visitor
[ ] Other (please list)
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

7. Which of the following personalisation options does your Web Portal provide?
[ ] Subscribe/unsubscribe to channels
[ ] Ability to create new channels?
[ ] Change screen layout / position the channel on a portal page
[ ] Personalise the channel content (eg the number of items displayed)
[ ] Change colours, backgrounds, fonts
[ ] Update personal information (ie name displayed, Welcome Joe Bloggs)
[ ] Others (please list)
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

8. With reference to channels, how do you prevent users missing out on new / vital information?
[ ] Some channels are locked
[ ] Others (please list)
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

9. Has feedback to date been positive, negative or both?
____ % positive ____% negative

10. Do you incorporate suggestions from feedback into new features in your Web Portal?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Not possible

11. List major benefits you've identified since the introduction of your Web Portal:
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

12. List major problems you've identified since the introduction of your Web Portal
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

Section C: The Future

13. Do you have any plans to develop / improve your Web Portal further?
Please list 'ideas' & 'thoughts' with regard to technology (regardless of its current availability)
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

Please list other 'ideas' & 'thoughts'
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

14. Is your Web Portal extendable?
i.e. can it grow as the institution's and user's needs change and new technologies emerge?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No

Please e-mail me a copy of the summary results.

Thank you once again for your time. It is much appreciated

References

Hypermedia References

HREF 1
http://www.utas.edu.au/library/

HREF 2
http://marketing.otago.ac.nz/marketing/staff/deansk.html

HREF 3
http://marketing.otago.ac.nz/marketing

HREF 4
http://www.lib.rmit.edu.au/

HREF 5
http://www.cren.net/know/techtalk/events/campusportals.html

HREF 6
http://ritvu.rit.edu/

HREF 7
http://www.educause.edu/conference/e2000/

HREF 8
http://www.cren.net/know/techtalk/events/portals.html

HREF 9
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/981004.html

HREF 10
http://chronicle.com/free/v46/i02/02a04501.htm

HREF 11
http://chronicle.com/free/2000/05/2000050501t.htm

HREF 12
http://www.caudit.edu.au

HREF 13
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/articles004/horizons.pdf

HREF 14
http://www.educause.edu/pub/eq/eqm00/eqm003.html

HREF 15
http://www.traffick.com/story/07-2000-portalfaq.asp

HREF 16
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/articles004/looney.pdf

HREF 17
http://www.msnbc.com/news/468936.asp

Bibliography

Copyright

Sandy von Allmen, Kenneth R Deans and Iza Bartosiewicz, © 2001. The authors assign to Southern Cross University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to Southern Cross University 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 document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web.

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