Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on 17th – 19th November 2008

Information Technology and Multimedia at UNITEN (ICIMU’ 2008), Malaysia

Development of Education Portal using Microsoft Windows SharePoint –

An Overview

Mohana Shanmugam, Saraswathy Shamini, Siva Kumar Dorairaj, Jaspaljeet Singh

Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN)
43009 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia.
{ mohana, sshamini, sivakumar, jaspaljeet } @ uniten.edu.my

Abstract Nasional, it is facing a new challenge to maintain the

There has been a huge, worldwide explosion in the use of
the Internet. The internet has provided great
opportunities for enterprise and education industry
integration. Many applications such as e-commerce,
corporate portals and e-learning are mushrooming and
emerging in high speed to formulate and gauge the
online mode of delivering, sharing and collaborating
information [5]. As such, construction or development of
new service require major programming effort, thus is
time consuming and demands considerable developer
expertise. Hence, planning for a web portal
implementation is essential for the future. An appropriate
frontward step forUNITEN is to initiate an internet and
user-friendly environment for elevating teaching and
learning experiences. In this paper, we explore, identify
and analyze the requirements for a basic educational
portal framework at the College of Information
Technology (CoIT), Universiti Tenaga Nasional
(UNITEN). Other highlights of this paper will be the
benefits and tools provided by the portal environment to
accomplish the institution needs to strive towards a
liberal and eccentric education. Consequently, this paper
also recommends a basic template for UNITEN
education portal.
1. Introduction
Internet is a powerful releaser of emotion,
motivation, and engagement for students especially now
that it has become a stipulation in enriching teaching and
learning experiences. Both teachers and students can be
invigorated by the freshness and immediacy of the net
with the implementation of an education portal. However,
in College of Information Technology, Universiti Tenaga
integration of information that revolves around students,
staffs, academicians and other college admin in one
standardized platform.
How can we keep the college connected in a
platform that allows them to maintain their individual
files, office and course files, collaborative work and keep
updated with the latest announcements of the college?
Thus, we now have to look at a one-stop education portal
specifically designed for the College of Information
Technology that permits the students, staffs,
academicians and other college admin to maintain their
documents, share and collaborate work between them
regardless of being in or out of campus. Consequently,
can the development of education portal be the solution
to this problem?
This paper then highlights the investigation of the
development of a web-based platform solution using
Microsoft SharePoint which enables access to anyone
authorized to the portal despite where they are. For
instance, with Microsoft portal technologies, colleges and
universities can now offer self-paced, online learning
opportunities hence making it easier for students and
faculty to collaborate through online communities; and
provide services such as class registration and financial
aid from a single point of entry through a Web browser.
Microsoft’s SharePoint portal solution also offers a
rich suite of easy-to-use tools and helps simplify data
management within a network. They give users
immediate access to resources, and control over when and
how they share information. Portal technology offers
even more advantages when integrated with a
management information system (MIS). Recent trials
indicate that Microsoft SharePoint products could be the
information-sharing technology of choice for education
professionals. A number of Microsoft Partners have
already begun working with universities, colleges,

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schools and local education authorities (LEAs), with the
aim of demonstrating the value of portal technology in
supporting strategic organizational change [1].
2. Core Benefits of the Project
By deploying a Web-based portal solution with
Microsoft SharePoint portal technologies, College of
Information Technology will acquire benefits as
summarized in Table 1 [2].
Table 1: Benefits of the Education Portal
1. Enables easy deployment of Web sites for
individual classes or learning communities
where students, lecturers, and administrators
can share documents and publicize important
events, resources, and tasks.
2. Expand online class offerings, optimize
opportunities for lecturers, and improve
communication across campus without
investing in multiple, complex technologies.
3. Improve student satisfaction by providing
convenient, secure access to administrative
services. Students can register, pay tuition
fees, and view transcripts, all from a single,
Web-based point of entry.
4. Increase faculty productivity. Lecturers can
create and distribute multimedia lectures and
other instructional materials online, using
valuable class time more effectively in
seminar and discussion.
5. Keeps students and lecturers on top of
changes to documents and to other site
content through alerts. Audience-targeting
features enable class updates, school news,
and important files to be pushed to groups of
students, lecturers, and other users based on
the role assigned to that user.
6. Allow students to access learning materials
and campus resources anytime, anywhere,
from any type of connected device, including
the Tablet PC, Web-enabled phones, and
Pocket PCs.
7. Integrated with the Microsoft Office System,
so students can access documents stored on a
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SharePoint site, determine the online status
of other class members, and communicate
easily with class members from the desktop
tools they use everyday.
8. Includes management tools to help
instructors and administrators secure site
content and monitor site activity.
A SharePoint site is a Web site that provides a
central storage and collaboration space for documents,
information, and ideas. A SharePoint site is a tool for
collaboration, just like a telephone is a tool for
communication, or a meeting is a tool for decision
making.
A SharePoint site helps groups of people share
information and work together [3]. It also helps us
coordinate projects, calendars, schedules, discuss ideas,
review documents or proposals, share information and
keep in touch with other people.
SharePoint sites are dynamic and
interactive members of the site can contribute their own
ideas and content as well as comment on or contribute to
other people. They don't have to use a complicated Web
publishing process before they can post a document or
make an announcement [6].
3. Portal Requirements
A generic education portal framework for service
integration should support the following [1]:
•Integration – provides plug-ins for connecting
to databases, web services and applications
based on a broad array of standards.
• Content management – provides update and
synchronization to various content collected by
the institution.
• Personalization – provides role based access
which keeps users to focus information, services
and processes most relevant to their job.
• Customization – provides flexible web page
layout and content organization so that users
have greater control over presentation aspects.
• Security – Provides user identification
management with single sign-in facility.
Obliging to the portal requirements mentioned, Figure 1
shows the Central Michigan University (CMU) education
web portal and Figure 2 shows the Central Michigan
University (CMU) integrated individual portal of a
student.
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on 17th – 19th November 2008
Information Technology and Multimedia at UNITEN (ICIMU’ 2008), Malaysia

information so that we can start working right away.

Site also includes navigation elements that let us find
our way around [3].

The home page of the SharePoint site is the

starting point. It contains the Quick Launch bar, views
of the Announcements, Events, and Links lists, and
the name and description of team Web site. A brief
explanation of each feature is as follow:

• Quick Launch bar - The Quick Launch bar

contains hyperlinks to specific pages on the
SharePoint site.

Figure 1: Screenshot of CMU education web portal

Figure 3: Quick Launch bar. Available from

http://office.microsoft.com

• Announcements - The Announcements list is a

place to post important information. When a
SharePoint site is created, a built-in
announcement is displayed automatically.
Figure 2: Screenshot of CMU integrated individual • Events – Event list is intended to help
portal communication between users of the portal -
whether those are meetings, key deadlines, or
work schedules.
• Links - The Links list is intended to include
4. Proposed CoIT Education Portal hyperlinks to team's favorite Web pages or
using SharePoint sites.

Other proposed features include:

In this section, we will look at several features
proposed for the CoIT, UNITEN education portal. By
• Educational blog
default, a SharePoint site includes a default home
page with space for highlighting the information • Posting and sharing of course related materials
important to a specified group of people, and several • Online forum
predefined pages for storing documents, ideas, and • Online calendar

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• Email notifications
• Announcements
• Contact List
5. Analysis, Design and Deployment of
the SharePoint Education Portal
A SharePoint portal contains top link bar that
includes hyperlinks to special pages in the site that
helps us navigate within the site, customize and manage
the site, or get Help using the site. Figure 4 illustrates
the top link bar. The hyperlinks on the top link bar are
as follow [4]:
• Home - The Home hyperlink on the top link
bar links to the home page.
• Documents and Lists - The Documents and
Lists hyperlink on the top link bar links to a
page that displays all the document libraries,
picture libraries, lists, discussion boards, and
surveys currently in the site.
• Create - The Create hyperlink on the top link
bar links to a page that enables the creation of
new pages and components for the site.
• Site settings - The Site Settings hyperlink on
the top link bar links to a page where changes
of personal information, name and description
of the SharePoint site can be done.
• Help - The Help hyperlink on the top link bar
opens a separate browser window containing
the Help system for Windows SharePoint
Services. Use the Help window to find
information about Windows SharePoint
Services and "how to" steps for using the
SharePoint site.
Figure 4: Top Link bar. Available from
http://office.microsoft.com
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Conclusion
The development of Education Portal using the
Windows SharePoint has many new features and
enhancements that can help top universities deploy and
maintain Windows SharePoint Services solutions.
Together, these new features and enhancements
provide institutions with better control over
information resources; individually these new features
and enhancements provide functional benefits that help
reduce administrative overhead and help enrich the
teaching-learning experiences work more efficiently
and effectively. Thus, it is a logic process for CoIT,
UNITEN to start initiating this education web portal as
a fundamental element in the nearest future. The
education web portal is committed to provide the
necessary infrastructure to keep people in the campus
connected anytime, anywhere regardless where they are
in a community environment using the Microsoft
SharePoint services application.
Acknowledgements
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this research paper are
those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the
views of the Universiti Tenaga Nasional.
References
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Framework” Intel Technology Journal, 2000, Q1, pp1-5.
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[2] Corke S., (2003) SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Products
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[3] Microsoft Inc., (2008) “Microsoft SharePoint Office
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[4] Rosen, M. “Enterprise Portals”, Software Magazine,
October 2003, Vol. 32, pp 18-22.
[5] Sarah Horton, USA. (2000). “Web Teaching Guide – A
Practical Approach to Creating Course Web Sites”.
Retrieved 3rd August 2008 from
http://www.webteachingguide.com
[6] Windows SharePoint Services in Windows Server 2003
TechCenter, Microsoft Corporation. Accessed: August
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