Keen-eyed observers may notice that Glamlife channels (those self-contained websites full of student information, with news and events that you can subscribe to) are, one by one, changing their appearance.
Here’s a screenshot showing the new look (on the left) compared with the old look (on the right):
For an example, visit the Chaplaincy channel, which is now using the new design.
Aside from including our new logo, the new design is now responsive, so those channels should now look better on tablets and smartphones. It also features our new logo, and a link to MyNewport (for Newport-based students).
We’re working on changing the channels to the new design in batches. It’ll take a few days before all the channels have the new look. This is, of course, just one step in the process of making Glamlife ready for the enlarged University of South Wales. More changes, including a new name for the portal and new information, will be implemented over the coming months.
We rather like the new design. What do you think?
After launching a mobile app for iPhones and iPads in January, we’re delighted to announce that an edition of the app for Android devices is now available on the Google Play store. It’s called Uni of Glamorgan – Glamlife. It’s a beta version, so some things may need tweaking, but we’d appreciate if you could download it, try it, and let us know what you think!
From time to time, students praise Glamlife, leaving us with that warm happy glow of a job well done. This week, we noticed that one of the Glamorgan Insights bloggers is really happy with Glamlife Marketplace, but also quite happy with Glamlife in general.
That’s the sort of thing we love to hear! Thanks, James!
Of course, it’s also nice when outsiders recognise the merits of Glamlife, but students are our customers, so we want to know any and all feedback you have about Glamlife. In turn, we report back about how we’ve reacted to feedback each academic year.
Why not add your opinions? You can comment below, post on the Glamlife Facebook profile, email glamlife@glam.ac.uk or fill in one of the many Glamlife feedback forms (there is one on each page).
The “Job Vacancies” area on the Glamlife homepage has been showcasing vacancies for a while. These come from a variety of feeds – and working out which are the most relevant to our students has often been a topic of discussions in the Glamlife offices. The exact combination of feeds has been changing seasonally behind the scenes. For example, graduate vacancies would be included only in the summer term and during the summer vacations, but be taken out of the feeds during the autumn term, when demand is much higher for part-time student jobs.
Good news: now you can choose the type of jobs listings that you are interested in – and access all types of vacancies all year round:
By default, all types of vacancies are shown. So, if you are looking for a specific type of vacancy, you’ll have to choose from the drop-down menu.
The Jobs Vacancies box displays a selection of listings from Glamorgan Openings. Sign up with Openings to see the full list and to search for vacancies.
For more information about the different feeds, see our job and work experience types page.
The University of Glamorgan App has now been updated with a bug fix for iOS 5. The app should now work on devices that have iOS5 installed.
The University of Glamorgan has been developing an app for mobile devices and tablets. The first version can now be found in Apple’s App Store, for iPhones and iPads. An Android edition of the App will follow later this year.
Developed by LCSS together with the Glamlife Team, the “University of Glamorgan – Glamlife” App includes easy access to
- Useful University contacts
- Glamlife News (for students)
- IT Labs information and PC booking
- Links to the most popular library services
- Maps
- A student jobs feed from the Careers and Employability Service
- Health care information and first aid instructions
- Links to the University’s websites
The app also includes a QR code scanner and a travel planning tool (for public transport around our campuses).
If you do have an iPhone or iPad, give it a try and let us know what you think of this first edition of the app: email glamlife@glam.ac.uk with your comments.
Update added (16/01/13) – We’re aware of an issue affecting users of iOS 5, which prevents the app from working. Developers have found the source of the bug and are working on fixing and updating the app shortly.
Normally, if there’s a problem accessing Glamlife, you can contact IT Support staff. Of course, when the entire University is closed for the holidays (campuses close at noon on 24th December and reopen on 2nd January), that’s not possible. So we thought we’d put together a few tips, just in case any of our students experience problems over the campus closure period.
First: has your password expired? As you have to change passwords every 120 days, and as Christmas is roughly 120 days after the start of term, it’s quite possible that for some of you, passwords will expire and need to be changed imminently. You can change your password online.
Second: did you have any outstanding debts? For some students, IT accounts may have been closed due to non-payment of outstanding balances. Unfortunately, this is not something that you would be able to resolve during the campus closure period.
If it’s not your password or your account, and Glamlife is not working, then it’s possible that there could be a problem with the connection / server that Glamlife lives on. This does not mean any of the other servers are necessarily affected. Blackboard, Findit, email, even many websites / channels that are part of Glamlife sit on different servers.
So, if there is a problem, and if setting / changing your password does not solve it, have a look at the list of direct links you can use when Glamlife is broken.
If that does not solve your problem, then you’d have to try again at a later time, or wait until the University reopens. Fortunately, it is extremely unlikely that such a severe disruption would occur.
Of course, we hope that there won’t be any problems with Glamlife over the holidays (nor at any other time!), and we hope you have a good Christmas break and a happy New Year!
You may have noticed two amendments to the Glamlife homepage over the past week:
- There is now a new Quick Link, Merger with Newport, on the homepage
- There is now a Times Higher Education Award 2012 Winner badge in the top banner, and the University’s logo has been updated to the current edition.
The link to the page about the merger has been placed there in response to student comments and feedback. Some students who want to know more about the merger have not seen previous news items and promotions – so a Quick Link will now give everyone easy access to the information.
The Times Higher Award Winner badge is there to celebrate the award for Outstanding Student Support that the University has won. Glamlife was an important part of the award bid, and the University is proud of its achievement, so it has been decided to celebrate the award in the header of Glamlife.
In other news, we’re happy to report that our work to improve the findability of information is showing results: after asking you to let us know whether you have any trouble finding certain information on Glamlife, and receiving feedback that showed us that the opening times of the library would show up only for people searching for “library opening hours”, but not for those searching for “library opening times”, our tweaks and changes have worked: now, if you search for “library opening times”, the best result is also the top result. We’re always curious to hear about things that aren’t easy to find on Glamlife – so if there’s something that you found difficult to get to, let us know!
Finally, a quiet hint about things to come: the word “app” is being mentioned a lot in our office at the moment. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone!
Merry Christmas!
Over the past year, the Glamlife server has failed a handful of times. This can be annoying and quite disruptive. However, it does not have to interrupt your learning: many services linked to from Glamlife are on different servers.
So we decided to publish this blog post with a list of direct links you can use on those (hopefully rare) occasions when Glamlife fails to work. We’ll then publish links to this posting on Facebook and Twitter.
Ideally, of course, the Glamlife server would never fail, but we hope this set of links limits the disruption you experience when it does.
Edited to add: if you’re experiencing problems with any part of Glamlife, you can contact the IT Services team for assistance.
We’ve been blogging about popular search terms a few times now, and we’ve been working on making things easier to find on Glamlife. When students provide us with feedback, we respond – have a look at our Feedback Report for last year if you want to see all the changes we’ve made as result of student suggestions.
We get occasional emails from students, telling us about specific bits of information and specific tools that are still a little awkward to get to. We’re looking into fixing those. In the meantime, we’d like to invite comments, so we can prioritise the things that need improving:
What things are not easy enough to get to on Glamlife, or hard to find at all? Please let us know, so we can try to improve matters. You can comment below or email glamlife@glam.ac.uk with your comments.
