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- Courses and programmes are probably the most significant.
- All students understood and referred to 'papers' - but saw 'courses' in the way that we'd perhaps see a programme. This meant, for example, that they'd use the online 'Course finder' when they were seeking information about a degree - and could might view the results (lists of courses) without understanding that they referred to were individual papers.
- Students didn't understand that a 'programme' is a 'degree'. When asked , they were vague about what a programme might be, they were vague (eg: "Collection of things?" "Maybe a form of course that isn't a course?").
- Students tended to work out 'undergraduate' and 'postgraduate' - especially when seen together, as in the Course finder.
- They thought they knew what 'major' meant - kind of. They'd heard the word, anyway.
- Terms like 'Honors' and 'Masters' were also "vaguely familiar" - but they didn't know what they meant.
- Other comments: "What is internal assessment?" "How do trimesters work?"
- They wanted words like 'co-requisites' and 'restrictions' to be explained.
- No student used the word 'accommodation' - instead, they used words like housing, dorms and houses.
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Terminology was a significant barrier for the secondary school students when trying to find out about study options at Victoria. We believe that improving the user-friendliness of our web content will result in an increase in undergraduate enrolments: anecdotal evidence suggests that 'window shoppers' are likely to look at several university websites, then progress their interest with the one that is easiest to understand.
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- Glossarise the term the first time it occurs on the page – – eg: You’ll need to enrol in six courses [print] or You’ll need to enrol in six courses [web] (rollover).
This approach should be documented in the Web Team's style guideStyle Guide, and socialised with faculties and schools as we rewrite their content.