For a Web site about course listings, the new Bulletin site (bulletin.uga.edu) generates a lot of reaction.
“For a while we were getting 30 to 40 e-mails a day,” said Fiona Liken, director of curriculum systems at UGA. “Now the volume is less, but we still get one or two every day.”
The newly designed site is a world away from its predecessors both in terms of depth of information and usability. Now, students, faculty and staff can sift through core requirements, check out the classes required for any major at UGA, find which classes need prerequisites and even compare requirements among two or more majors.
Forget the old paper version of the class lists; this is higher education version 2.0.
“We put the Bulletin online when we switched to semesters in 1998. For several years we have wanted to revise it to make it more user-friendly for students,” Liken said. “We conducted focus groups with students, advisers, faculty and staff and used the feedback in developing the revised Bulletin. The new General Education Curriculum, effective this fall, is a significant feature in the new design.”
The site boasts “Quick links” features that directs users to frequently used sites like the academic calendar, admissions office and OASIS.
“Many students were not familiar with the old Bulletin,” Liken said, “but now students use the Bulletin as part of orientation to become familiar with all the different majors and courses that are available at UGA.”
The site is updated each semester with a new list of courses and requirements. But it also keeps older versions of the Bulletin online, so students can check back to the standards in place when they started at UGA and make sure they stay on the right track.