Best of breed .NET Student Internet Portal

Canterbury Christ Church University commissions Ballard Chalmers to develop its new Student.NET Internet portal.

CTO Geoff Ballard expands on the .Net portal development

With more than 15,000 students across multiple academic disciplines the University recognises they need a more effective way to reach their students and automate real-time communication with them.

Students need a central place to find consistent information about the University, courses and items of personal interest. Their course timetables, modules, exams, fee payments and other important information are all held in different University computer systems and all this information needs to be made available quickly and efficiently. The University specified the need for an attractive and intuitive portal that is easy to use and allows for automated information updates that meet the majority of student needs.

The University is extremely keen to ensure that Student.NET is not just seen as an ordinary portal. They want the absolute latest in technology and graphical presentation, with a fully customisable and home page, drag and drop "widgets". This includes a range of widgets to match each student's individual needs, together with theme and colour selection and the type of Web 2.0 facilities students are used to in their online social life. If you have seen www.bbc.co.uk or www.iGoogle.com then you have the idea. Add slick smooth graphics and you have Student.NET.

The StudentNet portal is due to be rolled out in Summer 2009, with a launch to all students in the 2009/10 academic year.

Find out more about our bespoke .NET solutions

Portal features

The portal provides a central location for students to manage all of their day to day financial and course needs including:

• Student internal messaging service
• Ask real-time questions of University staff and faculties
• Subscribe to new information services
• Pay tuition fees and Council Tax online
• Poll and student voting facility
• Access course timetables and check course details
• Webnote module for personalised views
• Bulletin board to trade ideas and information
• Update personal details
• Flickr and other Web 2.0 type faciltiies

Portal technology

The functionality is created using ASP.NET 3.5, AJAX.NET, LINQ to Entity, LDAP, Active Directory, Web Services and WCF:

• ASP.NET 3.5 is used to create the StudentNet portal framework
• AJAX.NET and the JQuery JavaScript library provides a slick drag and drop client-side interface
• LINQ to Entity provides a data layer to SQL Server tables and T-SQL stored procedure and functions
• LDAP interfaces with Active Directory for authentication and user profile information
• Web Services and WCF provide back end interface layers

If you would like to know more about new Microsoft products or technologies, or how Ballard Chalmers can help you, please contact Andrew Chalmers on andrew.chalmers@ballardchalmers.com or call 01342 410223.

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