2013 Annual Conference — October 6-9Let’s Chat: Building and implementing an institution-wide live chat
Room 101G
Last year, the E-Expectations report from Noel-Levitz indicated a desire from prospective students for live-chat interactions. Live chat offers the opportunity for a real person to answer user questions instantaneously. By leveraging the UNLedu Framework -- a set of common HTML, CSS and JavaScript code run by all pages on unl.edu -- the central Web team was able to implement a scalable and robust chat system to accommodate our user’s needs. This session will explore how a $30 jQuery plugin inspired a full-blown, custom-developed multi-site open source chat infrastructure. We’ll explore the project requirements, implementation, tips, and tricks we learned along the way. Finally, we’ll discuss success measurements and how this simple tool has benefited the university.
Presenter
Michael Fairchild
Web Programmer/Developer, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
While working at UNL, I have developed the UNLchat system, which is a custom live chat solution. I have also worked on the UNLedu Framework (a set of common HTML, CSS and JavaScript code), and several other web applications that are built to help faculty, staff, students and prospective students.
