New Year, New myStevens

New semester, new classes, and a new myStevens look?

Yes, returning Stevens students were surprised to learn that myStevens website and app went through a “new year, new me” revival named “myStevens 2.0.” David Dodd, Stevens’s Chief Information officer, and Aaron Gary, Director of Enterprise Web Services, teamed up to reform myStevens to be more accessible, more personal, and easier to use.

“The tool behind myStevens is from the 1990s,” Gary stated, which is what prompted him to take on this project. “We want to provide a central space for students and faculty to access tools they need.”

This project has been in the works since midway through last year. The web designers and web developers started making architectural changes to the back first, before making changes at the surface.

“We left the roof, but rebuilt the house,” Dodd said. “We wanted user interface to remain the same while we updated behind-the-scenes.” This included building a back-end engine for constant communication and reporting info back to myStevens. Many of these functions were being coded and added to the system before students and faculty even realized. Dodd was careful to let the face of myStevens remain unchanged until it was time for the big unveil.

Some major changes include a new feature for upcoming events on the homepage. In the past, students would have to search out the link to undergraduate DuckSync to find out club meeting times and Entertainment Committee events. Other major changes include Canvas, campus network, human resource, and payroll systems.

Michael Scalero, Director of Learning Technology, was in charge of the re-design of Canvas.

“The new Canvas User Interface (UI) was our biggest update to Canvas this year,” Scalero states. “The new interface architecture provides a responsive user experience for the Dashboard and Global Navigation menu to push notification up into the new myStevens 2.0. The Canvas Course Navigation menu also collapses on smaller screens, allowing for a more content-focused and responsive layout, in part of an effort to match the interface with the mobile application.”

This is not the end for the changes in Canvas. Scalero adds, “We will be adding additional updates to with the Stevens’ coloring theme. The updates also position Canvas to integrate external technologies more efficiently.”

Additionally, returning students could recall the major changes in the myStevens app.

“Our analytics showed 15-20% of myStevens traffic came from a mobile phone or tablet. Many students had to zoom in on clicks and we realize our current site wasn’t functional on mobile, so we set to completely change that,” Gary states.

This is only the tip of the iceberg for the major changes to come. Dodd and Gary share the same goal to make myStevens fully customizable in the near future.

Dodd states, “There are these things called Personal Learning Environments. They’re incredibly important, because all students, every one of them, learns differently. So there are different tools that will work better for us, as individuals, and this is what we’re looking to do with myStevens, literally make it myStevens.”

They’re working on making the dashboard completely customizable, from moving the order of apps that students use and specific notifications. They also plan to make the three most commonly used features – Canvas, email, and Workday more customizable.

Another big puzzle piece is revamping student/faculty web self-services function. Currently, our student services technology dates back to the 1980s and we are one of the only schools to use our current function However, Stevens is one of nine schools in the country working with Workday, a human capital management software vendor.

“WorkdayStudent is going to completely revolutionize everything students do,” says Dodd. “Finding courses, registering for classes, paying tuition, it’s going to be revolutionary. Stevens will be the first to use this with Workday.”

Gary is excited for the beta program. They used the beta program before for testing myStevens 2.0, and it provided them with invaluable responses, from praises on what works to critiques on what doesn’t work in the new myStevens. After a successful experience, they plan to do the same thing again for WorkdayStudent.

Gary and Dodd would like to thank the beta group, different students, administrative groups, faculty members. They would also like to thank the team internally: the web developers and web engineers in the Department of Information Technology. They also would like to thank the Stevens community who continue to support myStevens and all the new and upcoming features and changes.

Have questions, comments, or concerns about the current myStevens site? Use the feedback button on your myStevens dashboard so we can hear your voice!