Higher-education and research are synonymous: educating the next genius and engineering the future. However, the two areas in universities are, in many campuses, leagues apart in how they create, consume, and distribute web applications. Research utilizing web applications, from custom PHP applications to content management system customizations and plugins, are commonly built as stand-alone, narrow applications gate-walled from the rest of the world. These one-off web projects dilute the community knowledge for our researchers, our students and faculty, and even ourselves.
Let’s consider a field of study ripe with web application development: educational technology. I’ll discuss the ‘state of the field’ for reusability and development design, and where we as web experts in higher-education can break the mold and engineer design principles and best-practices for everyone working with the web. It’s not just code - it’s building community, documentation, inclusive environments, and above all - collaborating. It’s the dare to share, from faculty to staff—assistants to vendors—project to project.
I'll discuss what makes an inclusive web environment for extending into research, and help craft a map to meeting this need.
You can learn more about this session on the WPCampus 2018 website at https://2018.wpcampus.org/schedule/lightning-talks/design-principles-for-using-cms-in-academic-research/.
Speaker:
Eric Sembrat
What is WPCampus?
WPCampus 2018 was the third annual in-person conference for the WPCampus community, a gathering of web professionals, educators and people dedicated to the confluence of WordPress in higher education. The event took place July 12-14 on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. Learn more about the event at https://2018.wpcampus.org.