| FHSS | Arch & Design | Law | Business | Science | Engineering | Education | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current state | Positives
Negatives/areas for improvement
|
| • Hard to find information • Events and news are important • Having different content on web to in publications can cause consistency issues • Regular visits from overseas academics but information for them is hard to find • Law Faculty and Law School can be treated as one • Generic student information doesn’t belong on Faculty/School site • Sites are a bit dull and don’t show depth and breadth of school activity | • Course Finder doesn’t work well • Lots of thoughts on purpose of a Faculty site eg. to promote the work of VBS and raise its profile, improve student experience, guide students to sources of help, grow students numbers, increase student engagement, inform staff, raise brand awareness, recruit international staff, promoting distinctiveness • The purpose of a School site is around education, research and development, who we are, what we do, news and events • Current sites are trying to be too many things to too many people • People need to know about our internal organisation to find information • Old content can get buried and left to go stale (e.g CD rom reference) • Accreditation is important – at faculty level and programme level • School sites not currently achieving promotional goals well • Confusion around language: international visitors don’t understand how “school” is used • The Chairs should reflect VBS branding • Not doing enough to sell partnerships | Faculty + • Hub for faculty and school info • News information • Visually appealing • Different media types • Specific news and information • Used as a launching off point • Research centres now on homepage of faculty site • Good appearance, has improved • Information about menu is good • Faculty office link is good as first point of contact
Faculty - • Overall purpose is not clear across faculty and schools, with overlaps of content • School focus over research centre focus - need better balance alongside the schools • Duplicated information across F&S and homesite • Slow and difficult to maintain • Content not up to date • Layout doesn’t work • Multiple fonts • Search functionality • Time sensitive materials are not well managed • Schools sometimes hard to find on the homepage • Course outlines need to be improved • Duplicated information across schools - where should centralised information live? Faculty? • Some of our terms may be academic related and not how our audiences (students primarily) may understand
School + • Different colour schemes across school sites • Layout quite clear • High level navigation • Events and news • Stunning photos (Antarctic RC) • Informative content, and concise (Antarctic RC) • Ratio of internal and external site links School - • School site structures are quite different - do they need to be? • Staff pages don’t look good • Upload of content not easy - Squiz doesn’t work a lot of the time, and the editing tool is challenging • Navigation really difficult once down a couple of levels • Research centre structure doesn’t work as well with the templates • Too much content and duplication • Don’t come up higher in google searches • Template are rigid - specifically around images, ratio of images to words • Font sizes and types - too many and not visually appealing • Information about menu differs to some extent for each school • Homepage for school too big and have to scroll right down the page • Some of the colours are not good • Staff directory • Current layout is busy • Current students are not looking at the faculty page Audience feedback • What is course finder? • Wanting more information that the course catalogue provides | General • Own technicians and programmers - 10 • Own web server • Some content on wiki, some content on university site • Web feeds automated as far as possible • Do not wish to change Wiki • Any staff can go on and change content • There was a previous view on boundaries between the web and wiki and this appears to have changed over time • Don’t have a school office, so low admin ratio • Don’t use blackboard • Provide detailed information on courses on school site (wiki) which is above and beyond the course outline i.e. COMP101 course homepage • More interactive • Staff pages - don’t use university, staff can change their own, richer and more current as a result of this Positives • Wiki - coming events and news items quite quickly • Improves the structure of making updates in that anyone can do it • Quick and dynamic changes • No restriction on authorship • Easier to rollback if there are use errors • Wiki currently provides lots of information • Databases of facilities assets • Able to see who is logged into their machines etc. Negatives • Too much information - too many menus, navigation options • Not user focussed • Not clear what is faculty information, and what is school information • Organisational structure as opposed to user focussed – it is what the academics understand • Website more difficult to edit, cannot update via scripts • Not very appealing • Too many links • Student feedback - confusion, do not know where to go to find information | Faculty + • Student voice - profiling of students on the site • The web presence for Education • Valuable information • Some good images • Has a friendly and welcoming feel Faculty - • Too complex • Hard to find information • Information not up to date • Way too much information - too many pages, too many words • Student feedback say o don’t know how to navigate around the site o information on site in incorrect • Faculty site does not represent the complexity/diversity of Education • Information is focussed on what we want to show them, not what audiences might want to see • Search results not good when starting from an outside perspective i.e. google • Courses within education are not consistent • Staff profiles not up to date and user driven o Would be good to source information from sources such as Research Master o Multiple sources of information to update • Hamstrung by templates o Information about menu has little flexibility, and doesn’t work with Education • Not much engagement with site • Resourcing issues impact ability to be more engaged with the web site • News and events is a bit quiet o Might be related to information not being fed to Rae • Does it have an international pull? • Do we sell Victoria and NZ? |
| Future State | Purpose
Faculty
School
|
| • School site wrapped into Faculty site • Information is easier to find • Content is more engaging (video, podcasts) • Everything is simpler to use and to comprehend • Improved staff listings and profiles (better pictures, video, social media links) • Logical place for information for academic visitors • Web contributes to building a sense of community • Ability to track goal conversions and make better use of analytics • Better ways of communicating with alumni (eg. update contact details) | • School sites could be wrapped into Faculty site – challenge will be representing everyone equally, or deciding if some should have a bigger profile than others • Accreditation agencies want to VBS to be bolder in selling strengths and brand • Site needs to be searchable • Everything should be simpler to navigate and comprehend • Ability to subscribe to an events/news feed • More engaging, entertaining content (video, images) • Better treatment of staff information, more engaging and relevant content | • Faculty website - the place that should highlight multi-disciplinary things, more so at the PG level. These things potentially overlap schools • Schools - window to what academics do. How to promote their research, CV's etc. • Promotion • Present the faculty to the world - programmes, events • Accurate and consistent and easily accessible information • Courses and programmes information • What does faculty mean to our audiences - the presence of this shouldn’t be too big as it doesn’t really do anything. Possibly more a virtual identity? • Events could be at university level, or school events. • Looking to make contacts - staff information is very important • Want to better engage with audiences Potential Services • What would or wouldn’t work with the CRM • Completing templates online - academic forms ran out of the faculty office | • Identify the user groups and focus more on these areas • Courses, subjects and programmes - doesn’t necessarily need to be central to the school site but should be a single source • Site is more than just a marketing tool • Focus on prospective students 16/17 or younger • Motivational rather than just informational o Profile the exciting stuff that students are interested in, and made them want to do Engineering at Victoria • Collaboration space for academics • Developing networking for outreach in schools - new site development • Easy to navigate • Categories of users • Accessible and exciting • Faculty vs School - could just be Engineering and Computer Science (not a faculty or a school as such) | • Faculty just has 2 schools - therefore faculty and school goals would be potentially the same • Opportunity to define who we are • Want to be aware of the audiences and generation o Be more visual to be engaging • Feel of the website should be distinctive to Education • Attract students • Inform students o What needs to be on the web o How to guide students to find more specific information • Programme information - Faculty site (faculty owns not school) (Noeleen) o Entry requirements and deadlines • Graduate voice (in addition to a student voice) - careers perspective, what will I do with this qualification • Get students to enrol • Helping students make the right choices • Contact for more information options - email link • Could work to have one faculty site o Working now o Programmes go across schools in education • Research Centres, chairs, etc have one page primarily and this works • Staff profiles currently in school area, should be raised higher in faculty potentially? • Education specific information related to courses could be on homesite, not on the faculty and school site • Live chat • Access and download podcasts • Share apps for download • Calendar of events? o Noted limitations on only showing mx of 3 news items and 3 events |
| Audiences |
| • Prospective students & influencers o Why Victoria o Why Architecture and Design o What we offer o Jobs from your degree o General information such as accommodation, finance etc. • Professional audiences, industry, other universities o Research profiles o Public events o Student profiles i.e. successful student profiles, recent projects o Ways to work with the university o External professional development o Impact, calibre, substance, status, value o Iwi • Postgraduate o Funding o Scholarships o Projects o Testimonials of students staying on for PG o Why Wellington o Enrolment procedures o Research vibrancy to attract students • Current UG o Building specific information o Course contacts o Academic rules o Courses, subjects and programmes o Student services o Testimonials of students staying on for PG | • Future students • Current students • Alumni • Prospective postgraduates • Academic visitors • Legal professionals (secondary) • Media (secondary) • Staff (secondary) | • Future students (undergrad/postgrad) • Alumni • Current students • Staff • Prospective staff • Professional groups (business and government sectors) • Other academics | School • Prospective students - recruitment • Current students - retention • Research Centres - ministries, other CRI's, etc. • PG students - contacting the academics they will be working with • UG students - attracting UG's to future opportunities • Other academics and institutions - contact, projects etc. • Potential new staff - recruitment • General public with interest in science Faculty • Directs similar audiences to the appropriate sources of information o centralised information that’s not specific to one school • Scholarships etc managed by FGR primarily | • School leavers (prospective students) • What am I going to study • Motivational stories • What are my options • Careers my qualifications will lead to • Current students (UG & PG by coursework) • Call for actions (also used for channels) o Events o Orientation o Employer talks • Course information (can currently be selected to be private or public - most is public) o Timetable o Assignments o Resources • PG by Research/PhD • Research groups • What staff research in (links to staff profiles) o Process to link with groups and staff • Scholarships • Industry • Profiling industry links • Opportunities to work together • Projects • Employers • Other universities | Prospective students UG • Primarily domestic • School leavers and also graduates coming for 1 year of teacher training • Programme information • Entry requirements • Course outlines - noted Early Childhood area may not want these public, around protecting IP School leavers • School leavers information is covered by homesite • Would still want programme information Prospective students PG • Domestic and International • Staff/research profiles (PG or PhD) o Contacts • Profiles of other international students • Facilities - buildings, etc. • Infographics/maps • About Victoria, about Wellington, what is the faculty like? • Teacher mentors Teachers • Making connections with teachers • Resources o Teaching experience office - assessment forms for teachers and students (unknown how often these pages are used), videos, apps, podcasts Community • Principals, and wider professional communities • A future area which could be developed • Research gate - able to share research with the wider research community Services/Functionality • Format of timetables aren't great o Doesn’t show tutorials o Provides access to wider academic timetable • StudyLink forms online |
| Channels |
| • Blackboard • All Architecture courses use this, but to what extent varies • Design have moved away from Moodle and now using Blackboard • Email • Past students • Also email current students about scholarships, workshops, jobs, competitions etc. • Other groups include business, parents, academics etc. • Facebook • Official and informal pages. Faculty pages, and students also have their own groups. • Blogs - students can blog work. Noted they are personal ones and there may be IP issues. • Twitter • Instagram • Repositories for large media i.e. video • Noted there may be too many channels of information | • Facebook – Making good use of Law Faculty Facebook page for communicating with current students • Youtube – hardly used • Twitter & LinkedIn – some academics use it • E-newsletters –general, annual for alumni, staff • E-Txting • Email • Blackboard – most staff use it | • Lots of channels, students not sure where to find what info • Facebook – VBS, IGPS. Used for communicating with current students. Some closed class groups • YouTube – barely used • Publications – brochures and handbooks • LinkedIn (VBS and MBA groups) • Blackboard (organised around class groups and trimesters) • MyVictoria • DID screens (x4) | • Vimeo • Facebook - Faculty and School pages, student societies • Email - distributions lists for events etc. Email main channel of communication • Blackboard - course information. • Posters (Antarctic RC) • DID's • Wiki • Texting • Currently no one approach for sharing emergency information - what channel, who sends it etc? • Newsletters - print and emailed | • Email groups - set up by faculty (ECS) • Bulletin board which can be subscribed to - at course level and otherwise • Facebook - fun things, call to action. Managed by outreach person. Is for current students. • Blackboard - only used by 3 or more academics. • By default will create a page for each course and provide a redirect to the course page on the wiki • Seminar system for PhD students - calendar feed | • Email (noting issues around bouncing email addresses, so not working well) o Used to notify people of opportunities • Academic staff use Blackboard to contact students o Students do engage with this • Students set up their own groups on Facebook o Noting its potentially a duplication of content on the web o Not everyone is there, may be excluding some people • Minimal faculty resource prevents extending out some of these communication options • Different demographic to rest of the university, possibly only 200 students at the more traditional UG level |
| Content Management |
| • Kristen will be updating the site across Faculty and School - all feedback should come via this role • Options: o Toolkit - so staff know what is available. Megan and Kristen could develop something along these lines? o Marking content as relevant for X period o Workflow and processes in place for content review o Push for staff responsibility for feeding back issues not just complaining o Better understanding of what content areas academics can contribute to o Opportunities for promotion of projects, events | • Monthly web meeting, working well • Review process can go as high as Dean where necessary • Weekly Facebook meeting • Adequate number of Squiz users • Need more writing resource • Squiz is slow and crashes | • Everything is funnelled through Kay. Good to have one person leading the work. • Low users of Squiz forget how to use it and need support • At school level, new features get developed then forgotten or ignored • It would be nice to have a built-in process for flagging old content | • Faculty level changes all filtered through Sam. No specific structure around this • When changes are made in publications, or in courses, programmes etc they are passed to Sam. These are prompted from other staff • Johan and Keith tend to provide more academic focussed updates • Comms and Marketing updates • There is no longer term planning at the moment for web content management • Want to improve messaging in terms of more clear and consistent. Have a more structured approach to updates. More proactive • Dave noted the web updates should be more closely aligned with strategy • Currently no student voice represented on the web, but noted marketing committees have student reps and at academic board. Opportunities there for them to input • ARC - all website changes are initiated via the admin team. Very little input from elsewhere How to improve • Reminders of when pages need to be reviewed • Using different language so the content lasts longer • What time of year should areas of content be updated - timetable of updates. Can be shared across the faculties. Toolkit? • Updating publication cycles • Committees asked to feed into process • Noted some of this may not work across the research centres in terms of an update timetable • Comms continue to share the media updates • The publications review process is painful to check for courses, subjects and programmes - manual over a number of days • Social media updates - Sam uses a calendar, takes suggestions from around the university. These updates are checked by Megan before they go out • Comms content meeting weekly - Megan and Sam attend this • ARC don’t have a review process • Media releases go through a more standardised process • Charlotte noted a Research blog - then shared on FB and Twitter • Need consistent training and skills for those that are looking after the website - high risk when some have lower skill set or rarely manage updates | • The site is not up to date in terms of content • Time consuming • Too few admin staff (Jen's position is a new one) • Growth in school means stretching resources • Need to review support, or scheduling • There is a working party to review web updates • Consider content from new publications to be updated on the web • Due to wiki accessibility, as errors are found they are able to be fixed by that person (or would be escalated to programmers/technical staff) • There is a function on the wiki to prompt updates for content, but not currently used • No current way to gain feedback directly from the web site from audiences • Have ran focus groups in the past to get student input, but can be quite specific, not necessarily broader web | • People not engaged in creating content o Need more time o Someone else will do it o Don’t know who to contact • Staff profiles o Process not understood • Comms and Marketing role - sharing Chris Wilson with Humanities but not sure to what extent • Isolated from central services at Kelburn • Web capability has changed over time via re-structures o Rae is new to the team and is main resource o Squiz - nothing is intuitive about it • Web is not on a standard agenda in any working groups, and is addressed more ad-hoc • Not addressed regularly with academics • Want to explore opportunities further with communities for what we could share on the web • Feedback from audiences o Focus groups from class reps? o SurveyMonkey • No sign off processes for collation and approval of content for the website • Marketing work associated with the handbook is managed by Noeleen, there are no other resources to do this o When College of Education the resources were there o Current staff are now having to upskill and take on more as part of their role o Could be using Chris Wilson here - Education are unsure what he is supposed to be doing, and they have never met him • Process on how publication content gets onto the web - not too clear with change of resource • Noted that print publications are out of date very quickly - can be managed better on the web • No current process for reviewing and updating content i.e. calendars |
· Blackboard
- All Architecture courses use this, but to what extent varies
- Design have moved away from Moodle and now using Blackboard
- Past students
- Also email current students about scholarships, workshops, jobs, competitions etc.
- Other groups include business, parents, academics etc.
- Official and informal pages. Faculty pages, and students also have their own groups.
· Blogs - students can blog work. Noted they are personal ones and there may be IP issues.
· Repositories for large media i.e. video
...