A while back I wrote about how popular our new polling channel has become within the portal. For those who worry about creating and aggregating content for a university/college portal, it is a challenge to create and foster the changes that must occur organizationally on the supply-side of the content chain to make the portal and other web services that exist at an institution to co-exist and compliment each other. Of course, one way this can happen effectively is through the use of a content management system. We are in the process of implementing a CMS from Hannon Hill, so in the near future there should be a few posts about that experience. Another way to address the challenge of creating and aggregating content is to leverage exisiting services and content. LaSalle University has created a prospective student portal built on SunGardHE's Luminis product. By doing so, they are allowing content generated in the normal operations of the organization to be presented to prospects and thereby giving prospects a better sense of the institution. As stated in a recent Campus Technology article:

For La Salle, there has been an unexpected payoff from integrating the recruiting portal with portal features for other groups like students, faculty, and alumni. As activity on the campus portal has grown, it has nourished the recruiting portal. The school’s on-campus announcement forums, for example, have provided content about lectures, academic events, sports, and volunteer activities that all can be fed to prospective students who share those particular interests. “At first we had to sit down and generate the content for the prospective student portal,‿ says James Sell, director of Portal Communications at La Salle. “Now it’s being generated for us.‿

Personally, I like two-fers.

Content Management System, portal, university, college