Tag Archive: lib1201


Works Cited

 

 

     “Clubs and Organizations.” Nyu.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. http://www.nyu.edu/life/student-life/getting-involved/clubs-and-organizations.html

      Cross, Christina. Club Coordinator. Studentlife@citytech.cuny.edu. 14 Dec. 2012

     “New York City College of Technology.” City Tech. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/students/activities/index.shtml

     “Student Clubs.” Harvard College Admissions § About Harvard:. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/about/beyond/clubs.html

The first step in of our research was to seek out if the list of clubs and any information about these clubs was already being published by the school. The logical place to look was the City Tech’s school website. The school’s website (link here http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/students/activities/index.shtml) provides students with a list of clubs and places they meet but it soon became apparent that our website was out of date and was not being maintained properly. After doing some research we found out that Information on the City Tech’s student clubs can only be found in a binder which is held at Student Activities Office (room G515). The binder is not allowed out of the room so this makes it tough on students who do not have much time to stand around and flip through this binder.  Because of this, we wanted to come up with a way to compile a list of all the clubs and make it organic.

The next step of the process involved doing some comparisons. It was important to see how other schools went about compiling their list of all the student clubs and how accessible this information was to their students. We looked at school websites of prominent universities around the country such as New York University and Harvard University

The first source we encountered was the NYC clubs and organizations webpage. Of all the sources that we looked at, this was the best organized and easiest to navigate. It broke down all the information by categories and sub categories that made it easy to find what you were looking for. Not only is the basic information for all the clubs provided, but it is evident that the information is maintained and modified whenever it is called for. Scheduling updates as well as a calendar for many of the events was provided on the main page of the club for all students and site visitors to see.

The second source was the Harvard University website. Like the NYU website, this resource provided users with all the basic information about the clubs. It also provided users with a constitution for every student club at the school. This constitution came with a list of articles that described the purpose of the group, membership requirements, as well as what is expected of the members of the clubs once they are accepted.

 Once we had a good idea of how other schools deal with the sharing of this information, we had to come up with a way to implements some of these ideas and making it our own. We decided to go with a Wikia as the platform to share our research. This would allow us to create the basic template for the clubs and then we would invite the club presidents to edit their clubs information whenever need be. This would assure that our content would stay current and factual.

We then decided on the way we would organize the student clubs. Our team decided to divide all the clubs into main categories. By dividing the clubs into categories, other students will have an easier time finding the information that they are looking for and not feel overwhelmed by a complete list of all the clubs. Some examples of the categories we decided to use are:

Cultural: Any organization or group that promotes culture and the arts. Cultural clubs are a way for people to get to know other cultures as well as share a part of theirs.                                                        

Examples include: Salsa Club, Chinese Christian fellowship, and the Women in Islam club.

Academic: Any organization or group that promotes the Academics. Academic clubs are a way to engage in learning outside of the classroom environment.                                                                             

 Examples Include: Chemistry Club, Computer Club.

Social: Any Organization or group that promotes interactions between students. Social clubs are formed in order to bring people with similar interests.                                                                                    

Examples Include: Student Government Association, New Tech Times.

Our team divided the work evenly throughout the process. We gave ourselves assignments and deadlines that would help get the job done on time and without duplications.

We also needed an effective way in which to share our research. Since we all used Gmail as our primary email account, it made sense to use Google Drives as the place where we stored our presentation slides. This allowed us to edit our presentation from basically anywhere as long as we had an internet connection. This also avoided the dangers that come with using a thumb drive to store information which tend to get lost and also leaves the files unprotected from viruses which can kill an entire project.

Proposal

An Information resource is tools that can help people solve a myriad of problems.  It organizes information on a particular subject in one location and allows said information to be retrieved and called upon when needed.   So we were intrigued in crafting an information resource of sorts to solve the many problems that plague our college of City Tech.  Since there really isn’t many students, if any at all, that spend 9 months of their lives living on a City Tech campus the school consequently lacks a ton of student life information, well access to said student life info.   For example many colleges, even other CUNYs, offer information on all student’s clubs and host them online.  From there our mission became clear; we wish to craft an information resource topic about all the student clubs that can be found at New York City College of Technology.  As students at the school, we are all entitled to access to these clubs but even gaining knowledge of what clubs actually exist in the first place, where they meet and what they do is too much for your typical busy college student to go around the campus and investigate.  How do they expect students to learn about all the clubs available? Throughout the campus there’s posting of ads clubs put up whenever they have events.  Boo!  After doing some additional investigation we found out that information on all the active City Tech’s student clubs can only be found in a binder which is held at Student Activities Office (room G515).  Which seems counterproductive since the binder cannot leave the room. Apparently this information would also exist on the school’s website if that site was updated and maintained; the information is well out of date there’s no info on modern clubs what so ever and some of the clubs listed are inactive.  So a new updated online database is clearly in order. 

We wanted our database to not just be a static page where all the clubs are listed but we set it to have it be organic.  What we learned from other colleges and how they lists club information is that the page is just static; it doesn’t really interact with you and it doesn’t really change unless the page master goes in and makes edits .  We figure that the best information resources are the more organic ones which the user can interact with on some kind of level.  What takes for us to make an organic information resource is a really good search feature.  The ability to search the database with tags or keywords that make sense and return what you may expect is very empowering for users.  Imagine being able to type into the search bar “Wednesday” and your results are clubs that meet on Wednesday.  This is empowering for a couple of reasons one is that a user who is interested in finding specific information about a club and searching them based on that can do so.  Wanted to find out which clubs meet on a day you’re actually free? No problem! Just search the day you’re free and it should yield some results.  This feature implies 2 additional features to make it work.  One is that every club basically gets their own page in the database and not just a couple of lines of text explaining that it exists.  The second is our database will not only make use of keyword searching but tags as well. 

Another way were going to make the site more organic is by something hinted earlier and that’s user editing.  It seems that other colleges just have a page master that edits the club page at the end of every semester. If the club has its own website then it just links to it and that’s something we’ve seen in sites for colleges like Harvard.  What we want is for the club members to come in and be able to edit their own club page and keep the flow of information on them consistent and organic.  Who knows the club better than the club members themselves? The platform we wish host our information resource on is the WIKIA since it naturally allows for these.