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religious of the sacred heart, us province partner case study

Situation
The RSCJ website has, from the outset, been intended to be a place to reflect our membership and to communicate with our extended community – far beyond the limited membership of the Society in the United States, It was to be a place where no one would go away empty-handed, even if the visit was to be a short one., a place where others would feel “at home”. It needed to fulfill multiple functions: to be an information point for people who didn't have much contact with the Society, to be a place to come back to for old friends and alumnae/i, and to be a place for RSCJ to collaborate and find information. A major consideration was the great spectrum of familiarity and use that RSCJ would bring to the use of this electronic medium, thus recognizing the need for education, training, and technological support for rscj users.

The solution:
This project was, consequently, much larger than simply developing the website. We helped to do assessments of technological capabilities and skill levels of those in the order. Based on the results, we conducted workshops to train small groups of people and we produced and distributed a training manual for web and email usage. The website itself was developed in two parts: an open side for public information about RSCJ projects, as well as a password-protected side for RSCJ only. The open side includes interactive areas like an exchange and a guestbook, feature articles about rscj and partnership commitments both local and global.. The “rscj only” side incorporates options for threaded discussions and input on topics of important membership issues, town meetings, databases to search the membership directory or sign out vacation houses, as well as archiving documents and policies for download. The members section serves not only as a forum for interactive dialog, but as a kind of “electronic filecase” as well. Those materials will not be demonstrated here.