Anyone in the AU community can now contribute their own content to american.edu’s AUpedia feature, after the site re-launched last month with a small facelift.
Billed as an insider’s guide to the university, the AUpedia is similar to Wikipedia. Anyone with access to the my.american.edu portal can create and edit content, said Bernard Schulz, special assistant to the vice president of Campus Life and a member of AU’s Web Steering Committee.
The AUpedia launched with the redesigned AU Web site last March, but was not open to the entire AU community until last month, Schulz said.
The redesign included slight changes to the main landing page as well as the introduction of individual student profile pages for all AU students, he said.
“We’ve got a re-launched tool that can serve as a great resource, not only for the university community but for individuals looking to come to AU,” Schulz said.
The profile page feature is a great way for students to promote themselves, Schulz said.
Articles in the AUpedia range from “Precautions to take when planning your classes and registering” to “Transferring to AU.” All of AU’s schools have a page, as do many clubs and departments. A total of 229 articles had been written for AUpedia as of press time.
Some students contributed to AUpedia during its initial rollout phase as testers or as part of an on-campus job, according to Schulz.
“We wanted to be able to provide some content — so it was not completely empty,” he said.
Maggi LeDuc, a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs, is one of AUpedia’s top contributors and is prominently featured throughout the Web site. She has worked on nearly 50 articles as part of her job at the university’s enrollment marketing department.
“Obviously AUpedia is a lot like Wikipedia,” she said. “I think it’s just so much easier to use. It gives you a much shorter, kind of real-person definition of whatever you are looking for.”
As a member of the women’s rugby team, LeDuc said she wrote many sports articles. Writing an article was simple, she said.
“I would first go to the club sport’s Web site,” she said. “I just tried to synthesize and summarize [what the clubs had written] into one or two paragraphs.”
AU does not censor content but will remove entries deemed inappropriate. Threats and advertisements for businesses are among the types of inappropriate content, Schulz said.
“If there’s an entry that someone finds offensive, there is a mechanism to go to that particular entry [and report it],” he said.
University Communications and Marketing and the steering committee make content decisions, Schulz said. More interactive features for the Web site are planned, such as a blog solution that will be piloted in the next few months.
“I would suggest to stay tuned,” he said.
You can reach this staff writer at eklapper@theeagleonline.com.
