Amman- 27 February 2019

On Thursday, February 21, 2019, the Information Systems and Technology Center (ISTC) at the German Jordanian University (GJU) launched a number of new features within the MyGJU portal.

This came during a workshop attended by the GJU President Prof. Manar Fayyad, vice presidents Prof. Atef Kharabsheh and Prof. Dorit Schumann, as well as a number of academic staff.

The workshop was presented by the Director of the ISTC Dr. Feras Al-Hawari who explained new E-learning features that are intended to make MyGJU the first point of contact between instructors and students. Specifically, instructors can manage and archive their course material (e.g., syllabus, slides, assignments, notes, etc.) through a shared and secure course folder within MyGJU. The uploaded files can be linked to the weekly schedules of the respective course sections to make them available for students.

He added that a secure privileges mechanism is in place to protect the uploaded files by making them accessible to owner, group and/or public as needed to ensure any privacy or copyright requirements.

Furthermore, a new coordinator role is implemented in MyGJU to allow coordinators build common course portfolios and then share them with other colleagues and thus spare them the hassle of redoing the same work.

Dr. Al-Hawari also announced the new publications flow in MyGJU, which allows instructors to manage or import (via a unique integration with the Crossref API) their publications to MyGJU for archiving, promotion, reporting as well as research purposes. Explaining that the researcher can also modify the data and possibility cite it in different standard formats.

At the end of the workshop, the attendees had a number of questions and inquiries regarding the usability, security and availability of the new features.