By Ryan Signorino
Training Editor
The MySBU portal received an update over break, featuring a reorganized user interface to make the webpage less text-heavy.
MySBU is a website composed of links to different resources students, faculty and staff need, such as academic, recreation and payroll links. There are multiple configurations for MySBU depending on the user, such as different tabs for confirmed students and online students.
Tim Geiger, director of enterprise services for technology services, said the main changes included moving links for Moodle and printing to the top of the page, making the search feature predictive and adding more links to the home page.
Each tab now has separate boxes to make the webpage easier to navigate. For example, the Academics tab now has boxes that will take users to pages with links for Academic Resources, Student Success Center, Records Office and Graduate Studies.
Geiger said the university began looking into making changes last summer.
“We got a team together of individuals on campus of four or five staff members and two students,” Geiger said. “We met three or four times throughout the fall. We looked at how MySBU is currently laid out and went through to see how we could streamline it.”
The website update was rolled out the week after staff returned from winter break in order to work out any bugs before students returned to campus. Technology Services sent out Notice Board emails before and after the update, notifying students and faculty of the impending changes.
Geiger said he’s heard good things on campus thus far.
Bobby Nguyen, a junior computer science and cybersecurity major, said he likes the changes to MySBU because they make the page easier to navigate.
“It makes it much more efficient and convenient for students to access,” Nguyen said.
However, some students seem confused about navigating the newly updated site.
Lauren Anderson, a senior biology major, said it takes her longer to find the specific link she needs after the changes.
“If I don’t know specifically what section something is in, I have to keep going back to the previous page to try different options until I finally find what I was looking for,” Anderson said. “My degree audit is under the Records Office, but I would have expected it to be in academic resources.”
Nguyen and Anderson both agreed a good change to the site was including an events calendar on the home page so users are aware of what is happening on campus.
Harriet Acheampong, a sophomore biology major, was confused by the changes to the layout of MySBU.
“If we changed just the whole layout to something that is more pleasing the eye, yet simple to navigate, students would appreciate it a lot more,” Acheampong said.
Geiger said it is typical for users to be confused when any changes to a site are made.
“We saw confusion with our last MySBU release,” Geiger said. “That tends to happen while users get used to the way the layout is.”
signorra15@bonaventure.edu
