It’s time to say a final goodbye to ACIS. By the end of next semester, ACIS will be completely phased out by the newly developed website, My Albion.
The site was officially launched to staff over the summer, then to students at the beginning of the school year. An email, sent by Chief Information Officer Robin Mohler, went out to students on Aug. 29 that officially introduced them to the site. Mohler said she is excited about the new student service and information hub.
Each individual My Albion home page is completely customizable and can be designed to reflect the user’s interests. There are a multitude of cards which can be moved around, removed, or added to the home page. These cards connect students with many different resources, from financial aid information to details about upcoming sporting events.
With course registration fast approaching, one newly available feature students will find helpful is a card titled “degree progress.” Here, students can easily see the courses that they have already completed, what modes and categories those courses count for, and what requirements they have yet to satisfy.
“As you register for classes, just having that big picture all laid out for you is super helpful. You can see it any time. You don’t have to go to another platform or your advisor, it’s right there at your fingertips,” Mohler said.
Within this same card is a “what if” feature, which allows students to envision paths for their future by showing the required courses for each major, minor and concentration.
While My Albion does a lot to help students, it is still a work in progress. There are a few kinks with the website that Mohler and her team are still trying to work out.
The goal is to make everything on My Albion single sign-on, so that when a student logs in to their My Albion portal, they can access all available resources from there without having to sign in to a secondary portal.
Currently, if a student clicks on the “register for classes” button, they are redirected to ACIS.
“By the end of next semester, we should be bug-free. We won’t need to login with our ACIS credentials, it will be single sign-on. And so you login to My Albion once, and then you’re golden,” Mohler said.
Another issue Mohler’s team is facing regards students’ preferred names. At this time, only legal names show up in a student’s profile, and it cannot be edited. Mohler said that by the end of this year, she plans to have a work-around in place so that preferred names are visible as well.
“We’re very mindful of what students want to have seen and not seen in terms of their personal lives, so that is one feature that we are working literally daily on to rectify,” Mohler said.
If students find other issues with the My Albion site, they are encouraged to submit a work order and fill out a survey. Mohler said that the feedback they have received is invaluable to the continuous improvement of My Albion.
“If we’re not doing something we should, tell us. Let us know how we can make it better,” Mohler said.
Despite My Albion being around this whole semester, it seems many students are still in the dark about it.
“I’ve never heard about My Albion. This is the first I’m hearing about it,” Clio first-year Hannah Birchmeier said.
Students who are conscious of the site say they had a difficult time finding it.
“It was very hard to find and access the website,” Buchanan first-year Murphy Wegner said.
Mohler, on the other hand, said that the feedback she has received is mostly favorable.
“We have had very positive feedback, I think because we have never had a platform before that is that one-stop shop,” Mohler said.
Mohler sent out an email this past Thursday that again alerted students of My Albion and informed them of updates being made to the site. The email also provided instructions on how to add My Albion to the iPhone home screen while an app is in the process of being developed.
Improvements will continue to be made to My Albion to make it as user friendly as possible. Mohler said the main objective is to create a helpful and convenient resource hub for students.
“And that’s the goal, it’s for you guys,” Mohler said. “Yes it’s for staff and faculty too, but really the goal is students and just making their lives so much easier, and I hope that’s what it does.”
Leave a Reply