Story by Tierra Reese, Contributing writer

Murray State’s communication department hosted training sessions last week for faculty, clubs and University organizations to learn how to link their groups’ information to Murray State’s website.

With the new website management system, campus groups can upload files, images, videos and other media to their web pages attached to murraystate.edu.

This is the first round of training sessions since the University upgraded its website management system to the Omni Update Campus V10 system recently these past couple of years. 

Charley Allen, Murray State’s web manager, led last week’s trainings sessions, and said the new system makes it easier for users. He said it has bells and whistles for faculty and campus organization leaders to make their groups’ web pages more appealing.

“OU Campus has some great features that allow us to dig deeper in training,” Allen said. “It’s important to have accurate, concise information on your website.”

This new update for Murray State affects more than 100 student organizations that can promote themselves on the University’s site.

She said instead of having the responsibility of updating an organization’s page to a designated staff member, anyone trained in the management system can edit and post.

“The system doesn’t require any special skills” Allen said. “If someone can create a Word document, they can probably use OU Campus.”

There are 170 trained users of OU Campus that are primarily faculty, staff and most student workers have been trained. Most residential colleges, the Student Government Association and the Honors College are all using OU Campus for their organizations.

Allen will host web training meetings at least twice each semester for those who need further assistance. Also, she says she is available via email or in person to help anyone in need.

“Our next round of training sessions this semester will focus more on specific topics like creating forms, and content audits,” she said.

Murray is among other colleges that have switched over to the OU Campus system. Murray State has held web training sessions since 2009 with an old system named Sitefinity. Allen said that system was harder to use and more complicated.