Competence Centre for Technology – Diversity – Equality

Internet portal for the “National Pact for Women in MINT careers” project

Customer: Kompetenzzentrum Technik - Diversity - Chancengleichheit e.V.

Kompetenzzentrum Technik – Diversity – Chancengleichheit e.V. (Competence Centre for Technology – Diversity – Equality)

The aim of the national pact between politics, business and the sciences is to change the image of scientific professions in society, to inspire young women to enrol for scientific und technical study courses and to win over female university graduates for careers in business. The pact is part of the German government’s “Advancement through Education” qualification initiative.

* MINT stands for Mathematics, Informatics, Natural sciences and Technical engineering.

Job:

To design an Internet portal using ECMS eZ publish focusing particularly on young women. The portal will be a source of information on scientific and technical study courses and professions, thereby making use of the potential of women in view of the emerging shortage of specialists in these professions. Various additions to the CMS were implemented, including a link to a geographic information system (GIS), a specially developed newsletter tool and a form generator. The website is highly accessible.

A second project step was completed in summer 2009. The objective was to involve the covenant partners more close in the project and to promote the exchange and communication between the participating institutions and companies. silver.solutions was contracted for setting up a community platform for the partners.

Solution:

The ECMS EZ Publish version 4.0 was used for setting up the MINT portal. The website offers a high accessibility by meeting virtually all BITV requirements and conditions (priority I and II). The integration of a geographic information system, which creates a dynamic project map and offers numerous filter functions, is a special feature. The RSS feed support and a newsletter system round up the project.

The community platform is based on the Elgg open source social engine. Elgg includes all functions for a modern community. The activity screen offers an overview of all events of the overall website and presents both the members’ activities and its own actions.

Elgg features a powerful standard profile function, which can be adapted and extended by the administrator if required. Groups that can be created by the users with regards to a topic, offer discussion forums, group files and group pages for a targeted exchange of information.
MINT community users can also request news directly through the news function independently from the groups. An event calendar informs the users about all events in relation to the project. Event dates are aligned between the two systems via an interface between Elgg and eZ Publish.

The activity matrix is a special community feature. All participating companies and organisations can see at a glance, in which of the five areas of activity the respective members are involved.

Partner:

A&B FACE2NET GmbH