Sacramento State’s websites should become more “social” to allow students to better connect with their classmates using such popular social networking sites as Facebook and Twitter.

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to update a Facebook status from MySacState?

The main Sac State website, www.csus.edu, has recently undergone a major facelift and now its “skin” is a lot more green and gold. Although the website has a few links to Facebook and YouTube, it does not integrate the websites directly.

Now, a new version of the student website MySacState is slated to be released sometime this week, said Lucinda Parker, project and policy manager for the Information Resources & Technology department.

These updates, however, are not doing much to promote student-to-student interaction, or even interaction between students and professors.

Parker said the new student website will feature a more interactive “My Stuff” page, less duplication, faster loading times and the ability to add “skins” to alter the look of the website, among other small changes.

In the current iteration of MySacState, “My Stuff” is not filled with content and requires students to do the work of adding tabs to it. Parker said not a lot of students have been using this page.

Even though the new page would be prefilled with interactive content, it will still be unfamiliar territory for students.

The new “My Stuff” will allow students to integrate web gadgets in a way that is similar to iGoogle. On iGoogle, users can personalize the Google search page completely by adding news, communication, game and other fun gadgets to the page.

What it will be missing, however, is a close integration with social networking websites, which is key to getting students to actually use this page.

There needs to be more to “My Stuff” besides being able to add different gadgets. It should connect students with the people they already know and interact with on social networking websites, as well as their classmates, to be completely successful.

Although SacCT, Sac State’s online course management system, already does this by directly connecting students and faculty &- the online system is a very clunky interface.

SacCT is designed in an archaic way and its Java-coded interface is prone to crashes. Students use this website to simply do what is required for their classes, but not much more.

We as students are more familiar with the simple white-and-blue Facebook layout. This type of recognition is necessary for SacCT to gain any more traction than it now has with students.

Sure, students can upload profile photos to SacCT and there is a way to e-mail classmates &- but it has a complicated design and not a lot of students seem to be using these features.

And unless a professor makes the class roster available, the students cannot see it.

There is also a chat room feature in SacCT, but students do not seem to use it because it is outdated. The chat room layout has not changed since 2006, and the web has undergone a lot of changes in design since then.

To promote interaction, there should be a chat option at the bottom of the page similar to what students could find on a social network site such as Facebook.

Social networking websites have already become a huge part in students’ lives.

A more social Sac State student website would invite students to spend more time connected to it &- and would benefit Sac State itself by driving more traffic to its websites.

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