It's the end of spring. What does that mean in the academic world? The new school year is on the horizon, which makes now the perfect time to consider improving your online course catalog. Did you know that OmniUpdate has helped more than two dozen colleges and universities automate their catalog? Institutions such as Stony Brook University, SUNY Dutchess Community College, College of DuPage, and Charter Oak State College, just to name a few.
Your course catalog can be maintained completely in our OU Campus™ web content management system (CMS) or course data can be pulled from your student or course information system, including Oracle PeopleSoft, Ellucian® Banner or Colleague, Jenzabar, CurricUNET, and others. Data that's not maintained in your existing system—such as academic rules and policies, and course and faculty information—can all be stored and managed in OU Campus as well. OU Campus can combine all of this data to publish a complete, online, viewable, searchable, and printable course catalog.
Did I mention it can be responsive? Mobile devices are attached to the hips of prospective
and current students. They are always browsing the web on the go. So it's important
that your online catalog caters to their searching behaviors. Fresno State recently launched their new online catalog. It's responsive, and it's fantastic.
It has a clean, fresh design; great navigation and search capabilities; and is effectively
designed to deliver just what students and prospective students need. In their case,
course information is pulled from Oracle PeopleSoft, while OU Campus controls the
design and automates the publishing. This centralizes the entire process and automates
many of the more challenging aspects of how course catalogs used to be managed. Their
catalog is definitely worth checking out. And take a listen to their journey implementing
the catalog in the video below.
Harper College also has a great online catalog that recently won a couple ACUP awards. In the past,
the college would create the catalog by accumulating all the information from the
appropriate content owners in Word documents. Then a designer would merge and format
the information to produce the printed document, distribute for approvals, and once
approved, the information was repurposed for the website. Now, OU Campus automatically
transforms course data from CurricUNET. What was once a tedious process for them is
now completely streamlined into their regular CMS workflow. We congratulate Harper
College on their awards and recognition!
Today's students and prospective students expect the content of your catalog to be accurate, timely, and easily accessible. You need to be able to administer your catalog in a system that you can rely on, and make it completely accessible from your website. You'll save on printing costs, support sustainability initiatives, reduce drain on staff resources, and minimize maintenance problems. With all these benefits, why wait? Let OmniUpdate help you.
