New Aggie Feed collects notices from all over campus into one activity stream

When the new MyUCDavis student services portal debuts on Oct. 1, the campus will also get its first look at Aggie Feed--a new way to distribute and receive information about campus events.

Aggie Feed is an activity stream, similar to Twitter but without the focus on social interaction or 140-character limit. As the service develops, departments, authorized personnel and campus organizations will be able to post items to Aggie Feed, and use it as a real-time stream of information gathered from many campus sources.

Individuals can adjust their settings to receive the information they want, and search for subjects that interest them. Aggie Feed can help departments simplify their processes for approving and distributing notices, plus reduce their reliance on mass emails.

Student Affairs, the first department to use Aggie Feed, installed the initial version of the stream on its new student portal (available starting Oct. 1). (See related Dateline article about the new portal.) Information and Educational Technology worked with departments and students to build Aggie Feed this year, and will now introduce the service to the rest of the campus.

Starting with students

Initial posts will include WarnMe emergency alerts, administrative announcements, Quick Surveys, and notices from SmartSite about specific courses. Future sources of information could include the Internship and Career Center, Athletics, online course evaluations, student clubs, and more.

The stream\031s initial capabilities are targeted mostly towards students. Later versions will add features s pecifically for faculty and staff.

Ideas in the works include creating the ability to quickly display events and deadlines that occur in the next 24 hours, plus Aggie Feed apps that work on Apple or Android smartphones and tablets.

Aggie Feed highlights important information by keeping certain messages at the top of the stream even as new messages arrive. For now, only WarnMe alerts receive that treatment, but users can adjust their filters to use this function and focus on the types of messages important to them.

Where to find it

The feed is public, although some entries are visible only to certain customers. Notifications for SmartSite courses would be limited to students in those courses, for example, and questions for a Quick Survey might be targeted just to staff or faculty.

For now, Aggie Feed can be viewed at aggiefeed.ucdavis.edu and on the new student portal. Aggie Feed will be embedded in such key campus applications as MyUCDavis and SmartSite. Other locations and options are pending. People interested in posting messages to the stream may send their request for access to aggiefeed-help@ucdavis.edu.

IET will continue to improve Aggie Feed as it collects feedback and engages various user groups to help set priorities for the next features to add.

Please direct questions or comments to aggiefeed-help@ucdavis.edu.