The Duke University online campus map is the result of a unique collaboration between the seven undergraduate seniors of the 2005 Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS) 200 Research Capstone course and several members of the Duke University facilities and administration community.
In January 2005, the ISIS 200 instructors, Casey Alt and Jessica Mitchell, assigned the interdisciplinary group of students the task of building a new online map for Duke, based upon actual project documents from an internal Duke needs assessment. The ISIS 200 instructors designed the course to simulate a small technology startup company in which the students were the startup staff, the Duke facilities and administration officials were their clients, and the course instructors were executive oversight. Within this structure, the students were given responsibility for the entire design and development process: designing the entire technology infrastructure and interface for the map, determining the project schedule for the map development, assigning team duties and project management roles, creating a project budget, integrating campus geographic and resource data from disparate University offices, and presenting and justifying design decisions to the Duke clients.
At the end of the 12-week process, the ISIS 200 students presented their final campus map design to the wider Duke community. Their design was so successfully received that Duke asked them to further develop the map as an enterprise-wide campus map.
Under the direction of Jessica Mitchell in the Office of Information Technology, and in close collaboration with Campus Services and the Office of News and Communications, the team launched the online campus map in August 2005.
The seven ISIS 200 students and their home departments are:
The ISIS 200 campus map project could not have been possible without support from the following members of the Duke University facilities and administration community:
The mission of Duke University's Information Science + Information Studies program is to study and create new information technologies and to analyze their impact on art, culture, science, commerce, society, and the environment. For more information on the ISIS program, please visit their website at http://isis.duke.edu.
