Meeting with Faculty, School and Student Recruitment reps who work with students
22/07
Terminology and requirements
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Terminology – suggested glossary as a solution “Get people used to the terminology that we use” – said this is ‘absolutely vital’. (Anne unsure about glossary as a solution)
General – Some kind of fast introduction to our navigation (location and purpose of main sections) or basic terminology could be useful.
Richard – terminology: they talk about ‘degrees’ when in schools.
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Richard – Careers advisors use the terminology they know from when they were at uni. Melissa – 'departments' are referred to as 'programmes within F/Ss. therefore different at each school and often not VUW's version.
Melissa – the units within a school are called 'programmes' within FHSS (maybe other faculties?). Were previously called 'departments'
Current site
Richard – Gets lots of enquiries after student can’t find something or get lost on the website. “Website is massive.”
Would be ideal to capture students when they are there – eg, register with the CRM. “Sign up and stay in touch” – for students who really are interested/ actually are prospective students.
Students going across moving between homesite and the older F&S sites and mainsite – – confused. Duplicated content, different templates.
Nicole – Sees the students who know how to get help, begging the question of what is happening to the rest. Website: students go down ‘rabbit holes’ to pages, often on F&S sites. Can’t find where they were when they want to find it again.
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Craig – “Biggest problem is explaining what engineering is.”This might be because engineering at VUW is .” not like at Auckland and Canterbury. [subject/topic content]
Their school has rapid change – eg, for specialisations – so need face-to-face with prospective students for degree planning. And they can bend the rules: “there is always an exception”. GUS and the calendar can't keep up with their changes. Lots of choice but students choose too many hard courses and fail.
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Craig – nothing on our website for Careers advisors or Teachers
Melissa – reason why we refer to courses by codes not names is because it is currently v labour intensive to change the site when course names change (quite regularly).
Degree planning
Melissa – BA course options – too diverse to show.
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They only see the students who know how to get help. How many people are there going round and round on the site?
Craig - Engineering try to give all students an exit plan if they fail the courses required to proceed with a BE (and most have to convert to a BSc or information systems in a BCom)
Course chooser tool
Nicole – be careful that it doesn’t doesn't become advice. Esp if the options can’t be followed.
General – degree examples: students are likely to just choose from the provided examples.
General – If the 'configuration' starts to be too complex (lot of options, exceptions, rules, variations etc.), 'contact a support/advisor' CTA could be shown.
Craig – need to tell school leavers that they need NCEA M or E for certain courses – A isn’t enough. Exit options from degree – alternative pathwaysisn't enough.
Limit to first year.