The University of Lethbridge portal is here – and a new web environment awaits.

Providing centralized access to all your essential information, the new web portal is essentially a content aggregator, bringing together all the information you’ll need as you interact with the University of Lethbridge on a daily basis.

The official launch of the new web portal will occur in stages, with the first phase of the portal available to continuing students beginning May 12. New students will gain access to the portal in the fall, while University faculty and staff will be introduced to the product in future phases of its development.

Student input has been a major driver in the development of the portal over the last year. Through a variety of focus groups and user experience sessions, student feedback has helped define the portal. The input provided gave the project team a unique understanding of how students use current systems on the web and in which ways the portal system can enhance students’ online experiences.

The portal is not meant to replace existing systems such as Moodle or the Bridge, but instead consolidate the various systems into one access location. The most commonly used services and features of interest to students were identified and incorporated into the portal, providing easy, single sign-on access to dates and deadlines, grades, account balances and course registration. Targeted announcements and RSS feeds will also run through the portal, as well as crisis communication information.

And this is just the start, because the portal is a living environment, with new features to be continually added as it matures. Already, student Google e-mail is in development and will be available later this summer.

For further information on the portal project and its continued development, check out http://blogs.ulethbridge.ca/portal-update/.