Page Comparison

Document status: Under construction

Current state of faculty and school sites

Staff said:

• Design: Tired, complex, unattractive and difficult to use.
• Content: Too much on most pages and too many layers of page. Maintenance is time consuming so time-sensitive information is often out of date. Quality suffers. (e.g. spelling mistakes, links that don't go anywhere).
• Content Management: Lack of time and resources (especially writer) for web content. Too many editors. Too little time for many to become/stay proficient in Squiz.
• Staff profiles: Difficult to maintain, so often out of date. Very dated/tired look. Poor representation of the University.
• Channels: Too many channels with the same information as (anywhere on) the web (and as each other). Students still miss information despite repeat listings. Would like social media listed more prominently.
• Analytics: Needs to be more widely accessible and used, especially data on goal conversions.
• Search: Site search doesn't give useful results.

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• Why are they different?: Future and current undergraduate students didn't understand that faculty and school sites existed as separate sites "This should all be one thing – school, faculty and Victoria. We are one university and there is no reason why it can’t all be together."
• Very low engagement: With f&s sites only used for a few things (to find a person, get course info, access a shortcut to a tool (via the header menu)). 
• Staff profiles via site search: To avoid knowing in what school to look for somebody, but also missing f&s news, events and other homepage content.
• Prefer email and Blackboard: As channels for information from Victoria, with all students also following relevant pages on Facebook.
• Postgraduate students: Greater awareness of separate faculty and school sites, but still had a very narrow information need (staff profiles, administrative services, forms, etc).
• Secondary school students: Students didn't understand the roles of faculties and of schools at all.

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Future state of the Victoria University website

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• Each faculty and each school will have an area (or subsection or space) rather than a distinct site. This means users see the appearance of an single organisation, upgrades and maintenance become easier, and still each unit has a space that is their own.
• Faculties with only one school might prefer to have a single blended area and downplay the difference between the faculty and the school. Faculties where this might be suitable include Law, Engineering, and Education, and Graduate Research.
• The faculty areas and school areas must be different from one another: Each has a clear purpose and identified target audiences, so the content should be different. They will be much simpler than the current sites.
  

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• Content currently on these sites that follows a standard university approach (i.e. isn't unique or truly faculty-specific) will be located in the appropriate area of Homesite (e.g. student well-being and support will be located in 'Current students').
• Content that is best viewed as university owned/curated core to the university will be centrally located on Homesite (but can be surfaced on faculty and school sites as and when required) (e.g. the courses we offer, the subjects we teach, scholarships available) 
• Content that is best located in one place to meet a user need can still be maintained by the appropriate people (e.g. Research centres, institutes and chairs could be located in the Research hub, surface on school sites, and be maintained by the same web administrators as now).
• Some types of content will be 'authored' centrally, then pulled through to faculty areas and school areas (and other relevant locations) via keyword tagging and/or search widgets (e.g. faculty and school news and events; staff profiles, etc).
  

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• The faculty areas and school areas will have a new design that is engaging and appealing, either utilising an appropriate presentation layer technology (e.g. we used Angular JS for Topics and Degrees) or, if this doesn't pan out using responsive templates in Squiz (similar to Homesite).

Content improvement

• Most of the content that is currently on faculty and school and responsive, following the same "mobile first" approach as topics and degrees.

Content improvement

• Most of the content that is currently on faculty and school sites will be moved pretty much as is, with some trimming and some rewriting as resource allowsdepending on need and resourcing. Attention should be given to the needs of the target audiences and therefore the writing should be in plain appropriate language, formatted for online readers, have more visual elements and be more engaging. 
• 'Features' (eg, student experience and project profiles) will be rationalised: We will consider carefully what they cover, align them and over time they will be more closely with aligned with News, include more multimedia, reuse those used on topic pages where possible, and ensure they're always recentand provided on a "reuse if possible" basis.
• Guidance will be provided to faculties and schools to help them address some of the content management issues they mentioned at the workshops. This will include advice on content planning, and tools and techniques for keeping content current. It will draw on effective practices identified in the workshops, and expertise and prior experience within the web team.
• Findings will be shared from user sessions where Victoria students were asked which channels they prefer for getting information and updates from faculties and schoolsresearch and testing sessions.

The Faculty of Graduate Research will be addressed in the postgrad phase of WIP 2 (phase 3). This is because in that phase we will look specifically at the information needs of postgrad , when we focus on the needs of postgraduate students.

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Future state of the faculty web areas

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Links

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