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 Maintenance is time consuming so time-sensitive information is often out of date.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- Staff profiles: Difficult to maintain, so often out of date.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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- Sections/areas, not separate sites.
- Much more focused on the audience needs, with a clearly defined and distinct purpose.
- Richer, more engaging and more recent content.
- Content much more integrated/aligned with Homesite (i.e. strong links to and even content surfaced from Homesite.
- Focus is on the audience context for showing content and building a relationship between existing content, not the duplication of it.
- Flexible approach - 'local' content that has no logical home on Homesite remains on school site.
- Aligned with Homesite approach for content increasingly 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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| Approach takes a long time to implement | Risk | Description and consequence | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Consultation could be long and slow, with many objections | Based on recent experience with the subject groupings, the consultation process could be slow, maybe very slow. This consumes time and resources, as well as the possibility that it introduces changes in a disjointed/non-integrated way. | H | M | Start early, so timelines are not adversely impacted. Shield most of the team by using only the BA and PM, plus COMT management. Attempt to use 1-2-1's with senior people (e.g. PVCs), existing forums for others (faculty manager, school managers, faculty management teams, etc), and casual or relational/network conversations with those we know and work closely with. | |||||
| 2 | True buy-in from faculties and schools is not gained prior to starting work | Despite obtaining approval and socialising the approach, f&s staff may understand or accept the approach. There are both many stakeholders and many layers (organisation hierarchy). This may lead to repeated rounds of negotiation (taking time and stressing relationships) and even lead to f&s doing their own thing (outside/around the website). | H | M | Ground our approach to communications/consultation in:
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| 3 | Approach takes a long time to implement | Improving and relocating the content on f&s sites is a big job. This may mean that some sites don't change for some time, continuing to have an old design and content. | M | M
| Planned and prioritised approach to the required work. Set and manage expectations carefully. Request more project content resource. | |||||
| 4 | Loss of 'online identity' for faculties and schools | As content that is currently on f&s sites is merged or moved the new f&s sites will be more focused. This may lead to f&s staff feeling that their importance as organisational entities is diminished. | M | M | Use all three consultation approaches listed in risk 1 above. Demonstration versions, as covered in risk 2 above
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| 5 | Diminished sense of content ownership across faculties and schools | Same cause as with Risk 4 above. This may lead to a reduced sense of ownership of the content, resulting in to slower updating / information out of date. | M | M
| Gain true buy-in to the approach during the initial consultation (education) and while working with faculties and schools on the content changes. Develop strong web author/editor networks to ensure people remain connected. | |||||
| 6 | Complexity around page ownership and page edit permissions | As more content currently on f&s sites is integrated into existing homesite pages page ownership could become unclear and authoring permissions may become more complex | M | M
| Plan content management with the Web BAU team. Train and communicate effectively. | |||||
| 7 | The Faculty of Engineering may be resistant to moving away from using a wiki for web publishing | The Faculty of Engineering (and school) uses a wiki to author and display some of their website content and be resistant to having to move some of their activities to university-standard methods. This may lead to the Web Team having to support two models, one for only one faculty and one school | H | L-M
| COMT management to initiate this conversation with the faculty management, trying to find a good way forward. Separation of presentation layer from content management offers flexible options not previously available.
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