What are portals?

A portal is a website that serves as an access point to information on the Web. A campus portal can be described as a site that compiles, merges, customizes and presents information and applications to students, faculty, or staff easily and securely, based on their preferences. If a university’s main website is meant to be its face to the world, then the university’s portal is meant to be its face to its members. Common uses of portals are to provide a single location for accessing grades, course schedules, campus information, email, employee benefit information, financial aid information, and term bills. The individual user is able to pick and choose what information they want to see and how the want it to be presented.

Who uses portals?

General portals such as Yahoo have found extensive use since the late 1990s. Institutions such as UCLA, University of Washington, and University of Buffalo pioneered their use on college campuses around the same time. However, it was not until recent years that they have become a staple among university communities. Universities that have vast decentralization of services and information can benefit greatly from a portal that can provide centralized access to these distributed points.

Why should I use portals?

Access to any information and services that students, faculty, or staff may need can usually be found somewhere on a university’s main website. However, often times these things can be quite difficult to find and may require logging in to multiple different access points. A portal site can solve both of these issues and bring easy access to those with little time or patience to sift through unneeded information on an exhaustive website. Portals can offer a one-stop-shop for most information that you will need and allow you to customize your personal space to give you only what you need. You can make your portal as sparse or as rich as you choose. Often they also provide a single sign on ability so that you will only need to authenticate your identity once.

Rutgers portals:

General
MyRutgers is a one-stop tool that provides you with access to important information at Rutgers. Using the customizable channels in myRutgers, you can read email, check grades, sign up for classes, search the Rutgers libraries, see a calendar of events at the university, and much more.
https://my.rutgers.edu/

General
RUinfo is the information and referral gateway to Rutgers University. It provides similar functions as myRutgers but is not personalized or customizable.
http://ruinfo.rutgers.edu/

Libraries
Provides access to all Rutgers Library resources (e.g. eReserves, databases, research information, etc.)
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/

Software
The University Software Portal provides access to all software applications that Rutgers makes available to the university community for downloading.
https://software.rutgers.edu/home.php

Career and Skill Development
The Division of Continuous Education Outreach (DCEO) site provides resources for career and skill development for students, faculty, and staff.
http://ce1766.rutgers.edu/

Course Management Systems
The CMSs that Rutgers uses serve as portals for web based course materials.
Sakai: https://sakai.rutgers.edu/portal
Blackboard: https://blackboard.newark.rutgers.edu
Rutgers Online (eCompanion, eCourse): http://rutgersonline.com/

General academic portals:

Libraries
JerseyClicks is New Jersey's statewide portal that features federated searching of the statewide full-text databases offered by the New Jersey State Library, the New Jersey Network, and funds from the Library Services and Technology Act.
http://www.jerseyclicks.org

Research
The WWW Virtual Library is a repository of links to scholarly and non-peer-reviewed resources in many different disciplines.
http://vlib.org/

For more information: