NewsU Next: Building our bold future
Posted by hfinberg
The crew at Poynter’s News University is about to embark on our most important project since we launched four years ago: redesign of the site. However, this isn’t just about a new look – although we really need a face-lift. This is about re-imagining how best to serve our audience. How can we make NewsU more useful to our more than 100,000 registered users in more than 200 countries?
That’s why we are launching this blog. We want you to know what we are doing and why. Our hope is that you’ll add your thoughts, comments and ideas. We’ll keep you posted on our progress and, at certain points, ask for feedback and suggestions.
To get started, here are some of the specifics. We are working with a Denver-based company called Aten Design Group. The new site will be based on Drupal, an open-source content management system.
Why Drupal? Many of the functionalities we need are part of the collection of modules already created by the Drupal community. That saves us time and money.
Here are some of our goals:
- More content with the courses so your learning experience is improved, including links to content on Poynter Online
- More ways to build an online community, so you can learn with others at NewsU
- Improved navigation within the site
- Features to help guide you to other courses, such as a recommendation engine
- Search [yay, finally, search]
- Better course reports for our students who have assignments
When NewsU started in 2005, we had 11 courses. It was pretty easy to display our offerings. Now we have more than 120 training modules, not counting the dozens of technical training modules on NewsU Tech. Even I get lost.
So, today we officially start on re-engineering and re-creating the world’s leading site for journalism and media training for professionals, educators, students and the public. Come join us on our journey. Help us help you continue to learn.
By the way, you can follow us on Twitter; our user name is newsuniversity.
May 30 2009
Lucy said:
Good luck with your redesign. It will be fun to follow your progress. I'm curious to know if you considered Joomla and WordPress as well as Drupal. And what did Drupal offer that the others didn't? We are considering a redesign as well, and we're looking into all three platforms.
May 31 2009
Howard I Finberg said:
We briefly thought about WordPress and some other solutions. However, there one important reason for us to go this direction: Drupal has excellent support for multiple languages -- and that's going to be important for us.
May 31 2009
Jennifer A Ford said:
I am a high school journalism teacher and I wish there was a way I could have my whole class take a course from my journalism lab. Anyone have any ideas?
May 31 2009
vince giorno said:
Here in Thailand, the "learn at your own pace" interactive courses and webinar replays (I anticipate but have yet to try) are great resources, but it would add so much to be able to participate in "real time" online courses and webinars. The problem, as with anywhere here in Asia, is the time difference. I don't have any great suggestions, but if enough of those 100,000 registered users in more than 200 countries are in this part of the world, maybe there is a way to get around this hurdle. Maybe not. Poynter and NewsU really do offer things that just do not seem to be available elsewhere.
Jun 1 2009
hfinberg said:
Jennifer: We are working on a way where a high school teacher could sign-up a class [in a lab] for a module. What we need to figure out is how long such a sign-on would be available and what info we would require [how many students]. Stay tuned. This kind of feedback/comments are helpful as we do the site design.
--Hif
Jun 1 2009
Mighty Mouse said:
Drupal is a smart choice.
Jun 16 2009
Anca said:
I am a journalism training manager and I look for cheap / reliable methods to deliver live virtual classroom training to staff scattered around the world. Any ideas / suggestions welcome.
Jun 25 2009
SteveinCleveland said:
Please keep the Be a Reporter Game! I use it in media writing class. I ask the students to solve the 'mystery' and write a story about it using only the facts. My hope is they see the power of facts. Many of them enjoy the assignment.
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