What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is the content sharing and collaboration component of the Microsoft Office System. The first viable version was introduced as part of Office System 2003, and is now used extensively in the corporate world to share and manage information on secure web sites. Many educational institutions also use SharePoint, including the John Hopkins School of Nursing, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Miami-Dade County Public Schools (which is the fourth largest school district in the U.S.). Office 2007 now integrates SharePoint even more extensively into all of its common applications, such as MS Word, and is currently deployed in all smart classrooms and general access facilities at NIU. ITS, however, is still running SharePoint 2003 on its servers. Funding efforts are underway for an upgrade to SharePoint 2007.

Most people are familiar with MS Office products like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These products are typically installed on your computer. SharePoint gives added functionality to these products but installs on server computers. Through use of grant funds from the Improving Teacher Quality component of the U.S. Department of Education, Information Technology Services (ITS) at NIU has installed a server farm dedicated to SharePoint Products and Technologies. One of the important features that SharePoint enables is the ability to publish documents and other data directly to a central, secure repository on the web. This method of document sharing is much more efficient than the de-centralized approach of sending content as e-mail attachments. In addition to managing content, many organizations are responding to increased costs of travel and the difficulty of finding a common time for team members to meet. As a result, Microsoft has now made SharePoint the core engine driving its communications and collaboration solution for the Office suite of products. Many corporations using MS Office have already deployed SharePoint as a content management solution. In the “new world of work”, information workers now rely on SharePoint (especially version 2007) to do their day-to-day business.

SharePoint is currently used by several departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and by various other programs across campus. For example, it is used in the LA&S Introductory Clinicals program (ILAS 201 and ILAS 301) to manage communication, issue tracking, and assessment. History uses it to manage student portfolios and assessment. Math has created a library of “best case” lesson plans, and Chemistry provides team sites that teacher candidates use over the four-semesters of their certification program. Computer science faculty use SharePoint to share departmental documents and to create discussion forums.

A phased training solution is in place to help students and faculty become familiar with SharePoint technology. For more information, contact the portal administrator for the Liberal Arts & Sciences Teacher Education Portal:

Gary Baker

Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Northern Illinois University

gbaker@niu.edu

There are a large number of web and paper publications on SharePoint. Visit any online publisher’s resource, such as borders.com or amazon.com, and search for SharePoint.

Note:

Students, instructors, and other users of NIU SharePoint are required to have a login account. The login account database is maintained and managed by Information Technology Services (ITS) at NIU. Any login problems are to be directed to ITS at 753-8100.