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Another mechanism that is becoming more and more used is the creation of Web pages both for personal and for course information. In many systems, only some names actually link to a page and the information displayed varies so much in contents and format that finding the required information becomes a difficult task.
In SiFEUP, it was decided that every person connected with the Faculty (students, teachers, staff) possesses at least a standard Web page with the (relevant) basic facts about him: name, category, professional phone number, institutional dependence, courses taught/attended, time-table, R&D projects, scientific publications, and possibly e-mail and photo to help identification, as well as a link to a personal page with free complementary information. Space for individual creativity is thus granted, but in a framework where even non-HTML experts have their own information displayed.
Also, every course has a standard page with the official information on its contents, bibliography, teachers, etc. Those courses for which the teacher maintains specific pages with further information (teaching notes, exercises, warnings, etc.) have a link set up in the standard page, which can be reached in a systematic way. There is no need to keep track of lots of URLs for each course. This mechanism provides an on-demand access to information, in a many-to-one manner, thus reducing the e-mail traffic across the network, which increased significantly due to the Dynamic Mail. For example, instead of distributing the marks of a coursework to each student, the teacher can just add them to the course specific Web pages, where the students can find them.
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