Although the Home page and FAQs section of iBranch.in contain a lot of information on Intra College Portals, still I felt like sharing my personal view on their need in colleges. Let me start by defining an intra college portal… It is a web based portal dedicated to a college, used by its students, teachers, & administration to collaborate among them. It allows them to share day-to-day notices & announcements, do day-to-day interaction, and share knowledge through Internet efficiently, without letting unauthorized outsiders see it.

A college is a highly interactive environment and collaboration between various entities is an integral part of its functioning. This collaboration not only takes place in the class room (i.e. teachers and students) but also regularly between management & students, placement officer & students, among teachers, among students etc. With increase in number of courses, teachers and students in an institution, the traditional methods of information sharing like notice boards, hand-outs etc. do not serve the purpose efficiently. Or rather we can say these old methods cannot keep pace with people’s expectations of ‘instant gratification’. For instance, modern-day students (almost all of whom are Internet savvy) would find it almost impossible to wait till next morning to meet their teacher just to get some reference material. And certainly the teacher would also not want the students to wait. Both would prefer an asynchronous method of giving and taking the document.

Such are the needs which are fulfilled by an intra college portal. So, basically it is an organized and secure platform for interaction, information sharing and knowledge sharing. At iBranch.in our mission is to research upon and bring to you the best possible combination of web applications which can fulfill the collaboration needs of a college, with highest possible functional efficiency and cost efficiency.

In my next blog I will talk about how intra college collaboration can enhance the quality of learning environment of a college.