There is some debate on the Ja-Sig list about the University of
Michigan's decision to abandon their own portal, due to escalating
costs. The community is trying to decide whether this is a rejection of
the portal concept, or whether a bespoke portal is far too ambitious for
an individual institution...

==========================
   Interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education

   http://chronicle.com/free/2002/04/2002041101t.htm

   The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor announced on Monday
   that it will close down its bellwether portal, my.umich.edu,
   on June 30, a little more than a year after offering the
   personalized Web space to its students. Campus officials say
   the university can no longer sustain such a complex and
   expensive software-development project on its own.
   [...]
   Michigan also plans to become more involved in academic
   collaborations such as the university-sponsored Open Knowledge
   Initiative and uPortal efforts. The Open Knowledge Initiative
   is a collaborative effort led by the Massachusetts Institute
   of Technology and Stanford University to develop a
   course-management system with non-proprietary, or open-source,
   components. The uPortal is a grassroots effort among college
   and university programmers to create guidelines and standards
   for developing academic portals.
=======================================

A reminder that we are now taking bookings for Portals2002. Glossy
leaflets should be arriving on your VC's desk soon, but in the meantime
the place to go is
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/portals2002

Paul Browning was asking for feedback from the Nottingham training
event. I'd say it went well, and was enjoyable, albeit intensive. But
then I'm biased! Any other participants care to comment?

Steve

Stephen Brydges
Learning Support Services
Floor 12, Tower
University of Nottingham
NG7 2RD
0115 9515035