UQ student portal wins three prestigious awards

my.UQ beat fierce competition to score in three categories of MIS magazine's inaugural IT Innovation Awards, offered by the Fairfax business media magazine.

The portal co-won the E-business category, was awarded second in the Customer Relationship Management category and third in the Supply Chain section. The magazine praised the my.UQ virtual community for more than 30,000 students.

"Since going live in January 2001, my.UQ has achieved its first large-scale success when 8000 new students accessed the portal for electronic enrolment," MIS magazine said.

"However, my.UQ can do much more than that. The portal offers one-stop access to services, study and information services, as well as e-mail. Information is also personalised through a directory system where students can tailor the kind of information the system can give them through news filters, search engines and calendarisation.

The portal was developed by UQ's Office of Marketing and Communications and ITS sections. Director of the Office of Marketing and Communications Meredith Jackson said the portal gave people an online parallel, a virtual university where they could go in and say "this is what I need."

The university plans to extend the service to information for staff and an alumni portal, which will extend the university community out into the wider world.

The magazine quoted one judge of the E-business category, Mary Anne Maxwell, CIO of Westpac Banking Corporation, who said the way the portal had enhanced the university community had won her vote.

"The project uses technology to create a community among people who sometimes have trouble doing that," she said. "With so many part-time and older students, traditional community drivers can't be relied on and the way it facilitates a connection with the university is impressive."

In judging the category, she looked for innovative applications rather than new technology.

"I looked to see if they'd done something interesting from a business application standpoint. If I thought ?oh, that's a creative use' then it won me over," she said.

More than 150 nominations were received from Australian companies for the 10 categories, with the largest number of entries for the E-business, Knowledge Management/Business Intelligence and Customer Relationship Management categories.

The award saw my.UQ featured in this year's MIS100, Fairfax Business Media's profile of the 100 most important IT users in Australia.

Media: Further information, contact Meredith Jackson, telephone 07 3365 6060 or Patricia McMillan, email patricia.mcmillan@mailbox.uq.edu.au.