Document status: Under construction
Current state of faculty and school sites
Staff said:
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- Design: Tired, complex, unattractive and difficult to use.
- Content: Too much on most pages and too many layers of page. Maintenances is time consuming so time-sensitive information is often out of date.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.This is the area we need to be careful with. Too little time for many to become/stay proficient in Squiz.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- Staff profiles: Difficult to maintain, so often out of date.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. Maybe make the point that this isn't about the search tool per se but how we manage information.
Note: Document research methodology and have handy, even if not in presentation.
Analytics said:
- Main uses of faculty sites: Who to contact; Staff profiles; Subjects and programmes (both undergraduate and postgraduate); Administrative information for current students; and Centres, institutes and chairs.
- Main uses of school sites: Who to contact; Staff profiles; Subjects and programmes (both undergraduate and postgraduate); Scholarships and awards and exchanges; News and Events; Student profiles (e.g. research students); and Centres, institutes and chairs.
- Paul Seiler (Unlicensed) to gather the analytics for the various parts of faculty and school sites
Students said:
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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." Need to be careful we don't suggest this is doing away with anything, Faculties and Schools still have their web pages.
- 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 Use site search : To avoid knowing to find staff profiles: This avoids having to know in what school to look for somebody, but also missing f&s news, events and other homepage content. Not sure about what this means, doesn't search throw up people well?has the unintended consequence of missing content placed on f&s homepages because the administrators believe people will be interested in it.
- Prefer email and Blackboard: As channels for information from Victoria, with all students also following relevant pages on Facebook. Which suggests a strong skew towards audiences other than current students for the web channel
- 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. Again, I'd outline research methodology, it will come up straight away
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Note: Document research methodology (for both prospective and current students) and have handy, even if not in presentation.
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Future state of the Victoria University website
- The Victoria University website represents a single while complex organisation single (although complex) organisation and should look and behave accordingly. User needs that are met by the website can be met by any appropriate part(s).
- The Victoria University website will is being reorganised around user need or task, with no expectation that users have prior knowledge of our organisational structure. That is a key driver, like it a lot
- There will be less duplication of content: Increasingly, information will have a single source yet be surfaced in multiple places according to need.
- New technologies are being introduced that will augment Squiz, allowing us more choices and better solution options.
- Improvements to the site search will be undertaken as BAU, with priorities influenced by WIP2 need
- Improvements to staff profiles are in scope for WIP2, and the work will be performed by ITS, the Web Team and the project team.
- Access to important analytics for key pages will be given to all users on our network via an info page (a sort of shadow or meta or derived page), allowing people to monitor how well the page is meeting its objectives/goals.. (e.g. see https://www.gov.uk/apply-uk-visa as an example of the web page and https://www.gov.uk/info/apply-uk-visa as an example of an info page).
- Provide an information page that sits 'behind' every site page, and can be accessed by any staff member and shows the key analytics for the main page.). This would provide detail on the page's purpose, target audiences, content owner, core analytics (eg, number of views of the page, average time spent on page) and similar things.
- The effectiveness of both News and Events is being considered and solutions discussed to bring about improvements.
- Keyword tagging will enable an item of content to be centrally authored then presented in relevant locations on the site ('reusable content').
- Strengthen Victoria's association with related (staff and/or student) external sites (see WIP-251), so that as an institution we gain the benefits of association with work our platform could not support or we would not allow (WIP-251) Rather than not allow, phrase as is not appropriatecan't support.
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Future state of the faculty and school websites
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- Each faculty and each school will continue to have its own have it's own area (or subsection or space)
but these won't be rather than a distinct site. They won't will be as less distinct from each other as they are now which means users see the appearance of an single organisation. Further, upgrades and maintenance become easier, while each unit has a space that is their ownstill providing each f&s with it's own online space. - 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.
- 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 to use and maintain than currently
the current sites.
Content
- 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'). Reminder that this is based on what we know about what people are looking for and whereThe driving reason for this is a desire to make orient our website around the needs of our users, not our organisational structure.
- Content that is best viewed as 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 mobile responsive, following the same "mobile first" approach as works well on a mobile as well as larger screens (as we are presently doing with the subjects/topics and degrees.
Content improvement
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- I Student Information better labelled Supporting students in study and research?
- Is Resources different or does it include Publications? Facilities? Forms?
- What do we do when facilities are not necessarily for teaching/students but either for research or available to industry (e.g. specialised equipment)?
- Where do we plan to put outputs from (historic) research funding?
- Publications and forms seem to fit as well in Student Information as in About Us. Are there a subset there and others on About Us? references?
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Summary of approach
- Sections/areas, not separate sites. Again, the language. Not sure we need to talk about not having separate sites unless we explicity explain it
- Much more Each f&s has their own online space, with quality content (sometimes reused/resurfaced) tailored to meet the audience needs, well integrated with homesite.
- 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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| Risk | Description and consequence | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation | |
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| 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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