The University of Notre Dame has launched a new electronic events calendar that delivers information about Notre Dame activities to your desktop, your smart phone and to personal electronic calendars such as Outlook and Google.
The new site, calendar.nd.edu, phases out the former agenda.nd.edu for a visually lively homepage of pictures and clearly identified events of the day.
New features will be phased into the calendar in the coming months. Among them, faculty, staff, students, community members and visitors will be able to subscribe to the events they most care about, and receive updates via RSS technologies. The calendar also links to map.nd.edu to provide immediate information on directions.
The new calendar was developed over the past year by a student and staff committee including specialists from the Offices of Public Affairs and Communications, Information Technologies and several administrative and academic departments.
“There is an amazing array of speakers and experiences on campus,” says Todd Woodward, associate vice president for marketing communications. “We were looking for a tool that was easy for community event planners to get the word out about what those experiences are, and to allow people to find them and use them on their own.”
The planning committee, led by calendar editor Jennifer Laiber, searched for a tool that complemented the needs of a university community, Woodward adds. “This new platform has proven to be successful in the higher education environment. It was developed at Yale and is used at campuses including Duke University.”
Complementing the new calendar, Laiber is managing a comprehensive training program so faculty, staff and student event coordinators can submit their events as they are planned.