It's buzzing; it's happening now. The website MESPOM.eu is taking shape under our very gaze. What's more, this is unlike a corporate website, where a 'web solutions' or consultancy firm gets a brief from a client and out hatches a website after due incubation.
No sir, this is a website of an educational institution and we do it ourselves here. This way, we don't go to a firm to deliver us a "solution". We get our hands dirty, we find out what our problems are and we develop solutions together! That overexcited preamble gets me wondering what needs to and can go up on this website that represents our prestigious program to the world. If I think aloud for a minute, the following is circling my head just now:
1) A customized search engine. This will search in only a predetermined set of international authoritative sources of information on the environment. More sources can be continuously added. The next time you have an assignment to finish in time much less than the total alloted, you can key in the query in this engine first to get your first scratch idea that omits all less-than-honorable sources .
2) Open Courseware. I know this is a much bigger step. But that should not count as a reason to postpone it. We are in an open world. Everywhere around us is talk of open systems and open societies. There is no doubt we have all benefited from the movement. Why, this very site is hosted with the help of an open content management system. As an educational institution, it is our duty to give back and share at whatever level we can. It will not be very difficult to put up; it will be difficult to maintain. Though in email I suggested that material from the Student Lecture Series can go up, it might be wishful thinking. There is no denying that the bulk of quality courseware will have to come from faculty. To begin with, we can just share syllabi, lecture plans, and reading lists. Perhaps followed by lecture notes.
3) Should we add a list of students with brief bios? Or is an alumni database sufficient? The latter will take time as we do not have any alumni yet. Maybe like other universities, we can have everyone in the MESPOM community listed and pictured.