A few years ago, Delta College implemented myDelta, a tool for students and faculty on the main website.
The online tool was for students to get announcements, news, check e-mails, look up records and to get an array of information about the college, from class scheduling to programs and services.
When a student registers, he is encouraged to check myDelta and emails on a weekly basis.
However, the myDelta portal has been vastly ignored by staff, causing information to either be out of date or with broken links sending people to 404 “Page Not Found” errors.
The last announcement from the Associated Student Body Government was on Sept. 2011.
Announcements could be used to notify students of staff changes and board of trustees movement.
It can be also used to give information about classroom location or office changes. The campus police could be utilizing it for campus safety tips, sending a different tip each week, for example.
With the crime and campus power and elevator outages, the alert system should be utilized more.
This past summer semester, the fire alarms were going off in every building, but there was no message in the alert box stating so, saying “not to worry,” that it was just a technical issue.
Only a campus-wide email was sent out along with an update on the Campus Police’s Facebook page.
Social media is the hip thing to use to communicate with people, but first and foremost, staff should be using what was created for them, including emergency notification.
Breaking away from safety alerts, and general announcements, let’s dive into some of the broken links found within myDelta.
One of the first links broken within the site, is the link to the campus newspaper.
The link is routing people to a website that no longer exists, “The Impact Online.” It has been many years, and many more semesters since the student newspaper was known as “The Impact.”
If a faculty member or student clicks on the student handbook link, they are routed to a 2011-2012 Student Handbook.
Other broken links are “Americorps,” “LD Lab,” “GED Services” and “Deltagolddd program.”
These links lead to pages with the “404” error.
Most of society today uses the Internet to gain information. Faculty and students are encouraged to use the Internet, specifically to check their emails and myDelta for important information.
With the information not updated, both faculty and students are not obtaining their goals for the semester, much less the year.
The reason for not utilizing the myDelta portal could be that it requires coding such as HTML or CSS to post updates.
Coding can be complicated and tedious, which can be headache-inducing for the person updating something.
If this is the case, then Delta College staff needs to remove the myDelta portal.
In this day and age, with social media being used, shutting down the myDelta portal would not hurt the campus community.