Our student stakeholders: requirements for institutional portals

This article outlines the work of the PORTAL (Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences Locally) project. The recently published Stakeholder Requirements for Institutional Portals report involved consultation with over 600 stakeholders from across the higher and further education community and provides a valuable view of stakeholders’ perceptions of institutional portals and their features. This article will focus on the needs and views of students, a key stakeholder group in institutional portal deployments. The article will look at the key areas of resource discovery, communication, course administration and institutional information as well as students’ views of institutional portals generally. The article includes tables illustrating the popularity of various features amongst student groups.