Narrative of a Day In the Life Of the Sloan Portal: Morning Student Smith: Smith wakes up in his dorm room and rolls over to his computer. He hits the home button on his browser and goes to his personal portal on the Sloan system. There he notices the announcements. Nobel Laureate Speaks Today: 3pm is the site wide news. Class Delayed BD Hour is the announcement for 15.010 and Party Tonight is an announcement from his Cohort group. He notices the weather, not too bad in Cambridge but well below 0 in his home town. He finds him mom in his address book portal and clicks to send her an email to see if the pipes froze again. He glances at the bboards and notices 5 new posts for his class and 3 in his cohort group. He decides they can wait. He notices that a new problem set and two new handouts have been uploaded in his courses. He clicks on the day view of his calendar and notices tat 15.010 is his first class of the day. He clicks to read the class delayed announcement and goes back to sleep for half an hour. Later Its not just before 15.010 and Smith wants to be ready for class discussion. There are now 10 new discussion group messages in the last 14 hours, the title of the 5 most recent are displayed. He click on the main Discussion group link and goes to a page showing all the threads and reads through, replying to several. On other days she has read and replied to messages using only email. After finishing with the discussion group Smith clicks on the link to the 15.010 class page. He looks at the calendar and notices there is class today at 11 (the new time showing on the calendar) and that a problem set is due tomorrow. The problem set is showing up under newly uploaded files so he downloads a copy. Reading it over he notices it refers to a handout from lecture several weeks ago. He looks at the portlet with the list of handouts and easily picks off the title and clicks on it and it downloads. He now clicks on the lecture for today and sees there are 5 recommended reading. He clicks on them and three are links to online readings and 2 are word files to be downloaded and read. Task User Type Task Type Clicks/pages from Portal Module Portal Log in All Personal Class Notice Announcements All Notice 0 0 News Announcements Read an Announcement All View 1 1 News Announcements Add an Announcement Staff Contribute 2 1 News Notice a new attachment Students Notice 0 0 File Storage New Stuff Read an attachment Students View 1 1 File Storage Add an Attachment Staff Contribute 3 2 File Storage and maybe calendar Find an old attachment Students Find 2 1 File Storage Calendar, search, document portals Notice upcoming events Students Notice 0 0 Calendar View upcoming events Students View 1 1 Calendar Add an upcoming Class event Staff Contribute 3 2 Calendar Add an upcoming personal event All Contribute 1 1 Calendar Notice a new Bboard Post All Notice 0 0 GC-Bboard Email, Discussions Read a new Bboard Post All View email, 1 or 2 email 1 or 2 GC-Bboard Fewer clicks to new posts. Post a new Bboard Post All Contribute email or 2 email or 1 GC-Bboard Weather All Notice 0 NA Stock Quotes All Notice 0 NA Research Links/ search the web All Find 1 or 2 1 or 2 Will try to pass search queries where possible. Course should be able to specialize their own searching resources. Would be good to pass authentication Student List All View 1 0 Directory Staff Info All View 1 0 Office hours etc. Edit Student List Staff Contribute 2 1 Edit Staff Info Staff Contribute 3 2 Email Students Staff Contribute 3 2 Spam