MyCATS system up in the air
As its use and functionality decreases, the future of the myCATS service is unclear.
At its core, myCATS is a portal, a type of web-based service which provides users with several different resources and tools, such as email and various other forms of communication. However, since the beginning of 2011, students and faculty have steadily decreased their myCATS usage.
“In early January, the myCATS server died,” said Interim Chief Information Officer Ed Boyd.
Although myCATS is back up and running now, the email service it provided was replaced with Gmail, a change Boyd says is here to say.
“We worked with SGA to identify the next generation of student email,” Boyd said. “The switch to the Google product was almost a no-brainer. The feedback I’ve heard from students and SGA has all been positive.”
“I prefer Gmail,” said junior creative writing major Les Bessinger. “It’s easier.”
MyCATS has not handled student email since February, and in its current state, it provides no functionality which other web-based services on campus, such as PAWS and GeorgiaVIEW, cannot also provide.
“There are only a handful of faculty who still use it,” Boyd said.
Bessinger said that none of his professors utilize myCATS.
According to Boyd, students mainly use myCATS as a middleman to access other campus tools, an idea which sophomore biology major Andy Deimler can attest to.
“I only use it to get to PAWS,” he said. “I don’t do much with it.”
“The question now,” Boyd said, “is what do we do with myCATS?”
The service is web-based on a portal program called Luminus, but the version of Luminus that supports myCATS is out-dated. “It provided us with several years of good service,” Boyd said. “But I think we’ve outgrown it.”
He says that upgrading to a more current version of Luminus might not be worth it. One alternative may be a different portal service called CampusEAI, a program specifically designed for colleges and universities that is already in use at Augusta State University and Albany State University.
But Boyd said that the decision of where to go next is not one which can, or should, be made quickly.
“It’s a decision that will have to come from a group representative of the entire campus,” he said.
Boyd is currently working to assemble such a group.
“There is not a single entity that controls, operates, or even maintains our web service. It’s a community effort,” Boyd said.
As such, the decision of what to do next needs to be a community effort as well.
“We need to determine what our needs are. It could be that we decide to use CampusEAI. It could be that we don’t even need a portal.”
Even without a centralized site for them, GC students still have access to every necessary web-based service on campus.
“We aren’t in any kind of bad situation,” Boyd said. “We just need to take a little time to determine our needs and decide where to go from there.”
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