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| About us | Purpose and role of faculty. Strategic objectives. Strengths and features. Org chart. |
| Location | Link to Our campuses. Include faculty-specific info about facilities if necessary. |
| Staff / Faculty staff | People finder tool? All staff associated with the school. Not presented in a table. Student and Academic Services - who, what, when (counter hours), where. |
| Forms | As on faculty sites now - large number of downloads. (May move to 'Current students' in the future.) |
| Mission, vision and values | If required |
| Committees and boards | If required. Complex information needs to be simplified or 'flattened' out - not nested too deeply. |
| Affiliations | If relevant at faculty level (rather than school level) |
Dean's list | Dean's list, Dean's award. |
| Publications | Link to mainsite for relevant publications - eg: School Prospectus, Faculty Handbook. |
Links
| (A tentative list) | Areas of study (topics, degrees, postgrad programmes) Research Centres, institutes and chairs (if located elsewhere) |
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Summary of approach
- Sections/areas, not separate sites.
- Much smaller and simpler - audience focused, clearly defined purpose.
- Content much more integrated with mainsite. Content exposed in key areas of site where visitors are looking at related material. Strong links from F and S areas.
- No content duplication.
- Flexible approach - 'local' content that has no logical home on mainsite remains on school site.
- Aligned with mainsite approach for content being organised by task, topic or user group - not by organisational structure.
- Encourage people to think about F&S content (rather than F&S 'sites').
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Risks
| Risk | Description | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| True buy-in from faculties and schools is not gained | Faculty and school staff may not support the approach; or may support it on face value, but not really understand how it works. | H | H Approval for the approach may be obtained, but when work starts there could be repeated rounds of negotiation required, putting stress on relationships and timeframes. F&Ss could go along with the approach, but build their own sites, wikis (etc) independently. | See the consultation on the approach as a process of change and education. In particular, staff in faculties and schools (who? the decision makers? administrators? managers?) need to understand and buy in to the user-centred approach to IA (rather than organisational unit-centred) and plain language. This may mean having more mini-workshops and meetings with groups of staff. Showing built examples of key deliverables will help stakeholders visualise where they need to get to (eg, topic page, UG degree page (if changed), F&S area). Reiterate the benefits (better design, reduced content management, their content more accessed in other areas. Works for their users). | ||||
| Faculties and schools may feel they are losing their online identities. | H | H Socialisation of the approach may take a long time. F&Ss may build independent sites. | Include a strong profile of the faculty or school on the example page. Show how linking from their area to their content in other parts of the site will work.
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| The approach may take a long time to implement. | H | L-M Faculty and school sites won't Loss of 'online identity' for faculties and schools | Much of the content currently on faculty and school sites will be merged with similar content on the homesite, or moved to a central location on the homesite. However, an outline of the faculty or school's purpose and role will be prominent in the new faculty and school areas. | H | H Socialisation of the approach may take a long time. F&Ss may build independent sites. | Include a strong profile of the faculty or school on the example page. Show how linking from their area to their content in other parts of the site will work.
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| Approach takes a long time to implement | Content on faculty and school sites encompasses a wide range of significant areas. Improving and relocating the content, and associated areas of the homesite, is a big job. | H | L-M Faculty and school sites won't change for some time: they may continue to have old design and content. Current issues will persist for longer than we'd like. | Prioritised approach to the required work. Careful planning: Paul Seiler (Unlicensed) is working on this. | this is underway in the project team. | |||
| Diminished sense of content ownership across faculties and schools | Faculty and school staff may have a diminished sense of ownership of content that isn't located on their site. | H | L-M
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| Complexity around page ownership and page edit permissions | Some of the content currently on school or faculty sites will be integrated into existing homesite pages.
| H | L-M
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Content ownership of topic and programme pages could fall to the web team | Topic and programme pages are highly important for undergrad recruitment. The topic page is a media-rich marketing page; and the programme page presents complex information in a way that makes sense to school students. To avoid these pages becoming ineffective over time, they will need to be maintained by people who fully understand the strategy behind them and have specialist web content and copy writing skills. The web team are under resourced to do this work. | M |
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Dependencies
Upgrade of Squiz: The timing of this might affect how and when we do certain work. When will admins be trained in the new approach? Will this be on top of helping with the new pages?
Technical development of new functionality: The new faculty and school areas require some new functionality (eg, for news and events, COO, etc). These alternative approaches must be developed in time for the faculty and school areas to go live.