Volume 12, December 4, 2000

This 105-page book is available online for free. "Colleges are falling behind on developing and implementing a comprehensive Internet strategy." (p. 11) "Your college should be adopting community-building tools within your Internet site in order to involve your students, alumni, parents, prospective students, administrators, business leaders and community members." (p. 12) "In most cases, institutions create a site that does not change the paradigm or add value to the organization's mission." (p. 13) "Experimentation should be the mantra. Mistakes should be expected." (p. 16) "There is no time to do long studies, no time to research, and little time to discuss. The Internet, its user expectations and the competition are moving too FAST!" (p. 16)

Don Philabaum presents twelve strategies to guide the development of a comprehensive Internet strategy for college campuses:

1. Create a Net-centered campus strategy.
2. Motivate and educate every department to help create a campus-wide Internet strategy.
3. Evaluate how you want your Internet site to generate new sources of revenue.
4. Create a campus-wide online community for all stakeholders.
5. Personalize your online community to continually learn about your stakeholders.
6. Embrace the communication tools the Internet provides.
7. Adopt a new marketing attitude using the Internet.
8. Use the power of the Internet to change systems and save time and money.
9. Provide students, alumni and others with new opportunities and experiences.
10. Bridge generation gaps by networking all stakeholders.
11. Offer innovative distance learning opportunities. 12. Decide what you should be outsourcing.

"Aware of the revolution that is taking place, some colleges are already developing commercial businesses to distribute their educational products online." (p. 28) "To put the rapid growth of the Internet into perspective, consider that it took 38 years for the radio industry to reach the 50 million-user lever, it took TV 13 years, but the Internet reached that level in only four years." (p. 34) "Email is the engine that is driving users to the Internet." (p. 35) "The most popular sites are currently called portals, because they serve as a gateway to tens of thousands of other sites." (p. 40) "Create a framework for stakeholders to participate and let them run the online community. Your participation rate will be directly proportional to the user sense of ownership of the site." (p. 47) Your comprehensive Internet strategy should be designed to continually change and adopt ideas and concepts introduced by students." (p. 114)

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