I don't know if everyone is aware, but SGU has unveiled a makeover of their website. It's more attractive, has much more information relevant to students considering the school than has ever been available before, and is structured in a way that is more intuitive.

If you don't already go to school here, it's great.

From the perspective of an attending student, I remain disappointed. I really hope that a comparable amount of time, thought, and work go into overhauling the interfaces that student's use while attending, and I think it's worth it to list them here in case someone is reading.

EMAIL
This email system is a clunker. It lacks the features of every free email service available, fails to block spam, fails to save items in a sent folder, and often fails to display messages in your inbox (requiring the infamous "forward to"-then-read maneuver). When we started a club on campus, our first requirement was that everyone use a non-sgu email system so that we could trust that everything sent was received and could be read. This system needs to disappear.

MEMBER'S CENTER
Visual eyesore. The organization is poor with links placed without thought throughout, the information is not divided into terms, and many of the links take you to pages that were constructed in the days of IE 3.0. For those trying to keep current on coming events, there is not one area, but EIGHT!

SGU Post (a place for annoncements, student-to-student sales, etc)
SGU News and Events (school PR newspaper by administration)
SGU Gazette (school newspaper by students)
SGU Talk (student bulletin board, empty, ValueMD knockoff)
SGU Bulletin (newspaper for faculty and staff)
SVM Paws Print (newspaper for Vet students)
and let's not forget SGU EMAIL and SGU ANGEL.

Such a fractured system of relaying important/relevant information can only accomplish one thing effectively: training students to ignore them all. So why is it such a damn mess? Because before Angel, the school used QuickPlace. When everything switched over, nothing was rewritten or transferred over into a readable, organized format. Instead, a link was simply put up to the old material and many of these sites have not been updated since then (3 years?). I am currently slogging through the Clinical Years website and it is far far behind the rest, so don't think that these problems disappear for you once you're off the island.

Instead of having around six different sources for student information, why aren't they all simply destroyed and a single, organized format put in it's place?

SGU ANGEL
This is where all of your course information is located (calendar, grades, syllabus, discussion board, etc.) Not to be outdone, Angel also has an email/messaging feature, so add this to the list of places you have to regularly check to make sure you haven't missed the typical "guest lecture coming at noon today" message sent at 10am.

Regardless of your term, you can only see the courses that you are currently taking. So let's say you're in 4th or 5/6th term and would like to take a look at the pdfs or PowerPoints from Physio. You are out of luck, as the system is set up to only allow the students registered in the class to see the course files. Studying for the USMLE and want to see those great Derm notes? Again, SOL.

To recap: what we as students use is inefficient, unorganized, and ugly. It is a patchwork mess in serious need of an overhaul. By this, I do not mean more patches. Ideally, there should be two pages:

Page One
This is a public page containing the content currently strewn across the SGU Main Page, SGU News and Events, SGU Gazette, and SVM Paws Print.

Page Two
This is a private page that would take the place of My SGU. It would require a single login and include all of the information strewn across SGU Email, ANGEL, SGU Post, and SGU Bulletin. SGU Talk would be aborted and a direct link to Value MD would take it's place as this website already does a good job of allowing student-student discussions. The files on Angel would be available for every class that a student has ever taken, messages to students would come through a single channel (instead of six), and an organized list of resources pertinent to each term would be available to anyone that was curious, i.e. a first termer could read about clinical placements if she so chose.

I'm curious to hear what others think.

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i looked a few days ago and the first page looked great but it linked to the old dumpy pages. anyway you shojuld ahve seen it about 5 years ago.

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Steph
If you get a warning, put on yer manpants and stop whining about it.

Amen. Especially the multiple places for sources of information. I still don't know where I'm going half the time.

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Visit my blog at: http://sgumd.blogspot.com

i couldn't agree more. the website, especially the members center, is an abortion.

ill give them this: its better than most offshore ones and a heck of a lot better than harvards.

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Steph
If you get a warning, put on yer manpants and stop whining about it.

better than harvards?! reading that just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. the 250K i will be contributing to them is all worth it now.

this will make your day then: harvard medical school: give them your tuition, they'll give you the books, and when you come back in 4 years you get a degree. the curriculm in a nutshell.

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Steph
If you get a warning, put on yer manpants and stop whining about it.

Haha, that makes it sound like they need to do rotations on their own as well. Then again, since they're Harvard students I'm sure they'd have no problem getting them organized/scheduled with any hospital.

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I don't know about Harvard, but it's better than most other off-shore schools.