A new approach to faculty and school content (v.2)

Document status: This is the current version. Please ignore earlier versions.

What is the current situation?

Workshop feedback

In the workshops, representatives from faculties and schools gave us the following feedback about their sites.

Design

• The design is 'tired'. 
• The design needs to be simpler. 
• The aesthetics and user experience aren't good or attractive. 
• Needs to be more current, engaging and simple.

Content

• There's too much content. Pages can get buried and forgotten about. Maintaining the sites is time consuming. It's difficult to keep time-sensitive information current. Content maintenance is a big issue: we've found spelling mistakes that weren't picked up, links that don't go anywhere.
• Pages are too wordy. They need to be much simpler. They need to be more visual and use current technology - such as more video and podcasts.
• Lack of time and resources for web content. Need more content writing resource.
• Content management works best when it's led by one person.
• If you're not going to use Squiz often, it's hard to use.
• Regular content planning meetings work well for web and social media, especially when there's input and engagement from academic staff. 

IA

• It's hard to find things. You go looking for something and you can't find it. Need to be able to find information faster.

Staff profiles

• Maintaining staff profiles is a pain.
• The staff directory is a problem - people don't know how to fix it and don't know that they are supposed to keep it up to date. 

Channels

• We've got too many channels of information. Students are missing information even though they are being told it in a million different ways. They don't know which place they should go to.
• It would be good to have linkages to official social media channels.
• Some of our social media channels aren't well managed.

Analytics

• Faculties and schools want to see analytics, including data about conversions.

Search

• The site search doesn't give useful results.

Google Analytics 

A Google Analytics report for 1 March to 31 May 2015 showed us that audiences are using faculty and school sites primarily to access the following information.

Faculty site:

• Who to contact
• Staff profiles
• Subjects and programmes - undergrad and postgrad (this traffic is likely to come in via the site search)
• Admin info for current students (eg, facilities, building access hours, academic transcripts, faculty handbook, forms)
• Accessing centres and institutes.

School site:

• Who to contact
• Staff profiles
• Subjects, programmes and courses - undergrad and postgrad
• Scholarships and awards and exchanges
• News
• Events
• Student profiles - eg, research students
• Accessing centres and institutes.

User sessions

Victoria students

In July 2015 the WIP2 web project team held sessions with six current Victoria students from a range of study areas. Five were undergraduate and one was postgraduate.

• All the students had very low engagement with the 'Vic website' (a term they used to include F&S sites). These students reported that they use the 'Vic website' to meet a very narrow range of needs: find a person, get course info or access a shortcut to a tool (via the header menu). One student indicated that he also uses the Vic website to access information on dates, grades, timetables and similar - this content is in 'Current students'. 
• When accessing staff profiles, students used search and therefore didn't visit the home page of the faculty or school site where the profile was located. They thus missed news, events and other features on the home page.
• The students identified email and BlackBoard as their preferred channels for information from Victoria, with all students also following relevant pages on Facebook.
• The undergraduate students didn't understand that faculty and school sites existed as separate sites. When we pointed out to one student that she was on a separate school site, she commented: “This should all be one thing – school, faculty and Victoria. And it is all the same thing. We are one university and there is no reason why it can’t all be together."
• The postgraduate student had greater awareness of separate faculty and school sites, but said she only used the school site for staff info - so she could find out the room number for a staff member. Occasionally she might look at pics of staff members "to see who they are"; or might use staff profiles to find out "which Dean to talk to for which thing". She didn't use faculty or school sites, or the Victoria website, for anything else.
• Three students stated that they didn't trust the web content because it might be inaccurate or out of date: they would email or phone someone to check.

Secondary school students

In July 2015 the WIP2 web project team held sessions with six secondary school students from years 12 and 13 who had identified as being interesting in going to university. Students from a range of interest areas were selected.

Relevant findings:

• Search results were sometimes swamped with results from F&S sites, which could be confusing.
• Students weren't sure about the roles of faculties and of schools. 
  
  

Victoria University website: where it's going

• The Victoria University website represents a single organisation. A key aspect of this is that all core sites are being integrated with the main site (referred to as the 'mainsite' or 'homesite'). 
• The Victoria University website is topic, task and audience based. We're moving towards having all the website content organised on this basis, rather than by our organisational structure. 
• There will be no content duplicates: all information will have a single source. However, the site will provide the ability to display some content in different locations when needed (eg, news, events, staff profiles).

New initiatives

• The current information architecture (IA) is under review, including top menu items and second-level navigation options.
• Work to improve the site search will be undertaken as part of WIP2.
• Improvements to staff profiles have been proposed by the WIP2 project team, who are having discussions about this with ITS. 
• Scoping work is underway to provide an information page that sits 'behind' every site page, and can be accessed by staff. 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').
• Victoria's association with related third-party sites will be made clearer, when this is appropriate.
  
  

A new approach for faculty and school web content

The WIP2 project team has been asked to recommend an improved approach to presenting faculty and school content online.

Structure

• Each faculty and each school will have an area (or subsection or space) rather than a distinct site.
• Faculties and schools that are combined, or wish to be combined on the web, will have a blended area. Combined areas could be provided for: Law, Engineering and CS, and possibly Architecture and Design (to be discussed).
• The faculty areas and school areas will be different from one another: they won't have duplicate content, and each of the two types of area will be tightly focused on a clear purpose and identified target audiences. They will be much simpler than the current sites.
  
  

Where content is general and outlines a standard university approach, it will be located in a common area of the mainsite, rather than duplicated across faculty areas or school areas.

For example:

• • Student wellbeing and support will be located in 'Current students'.
  • Alumni will be located in a new 'engagement hub' that is being planned.
  • Overseas exchanges will be located in 'Victoria Abroad'. 
     

Content that is of high interest to Victoria's audiences will be centrally located on the mainsite, rather than in faculty areas or school areas.

For example:

• Courses, subjects and programmes will be located in 'Study at Victoria' (currently called 'Future students’). The structure, presentation and content will be improved. 
• Diplomas, certificates and professional development courses will also be located in 'Study at Victoria'. 
  • Where these are postgrad (or 'graduate'), improving their content is in scope for the WIP2 project. 
  • Where they are 'pre-degree', improving their content of is out of scope.
• Profiles of research projects (current projects and significant past projects), research funding and research partnerships will be located in the 'Research' section. 
• Scholarships information will be located in the Scholarships section of 'Current students' (which includes the Scholarships database).
• Information about the location of faculties and schools (including maps, information about getting there and parking, and similar) will live in an improved version of the area that is currently called Our campuses. 
• Student study materials and other learning resources that are currently on school sites are likely to eventually live in a student learning area of the homesite. This is a longer-term project.
   

Other content:

• Research reports are extensive and diverse, and need careful consideration. One proposal is that they are located in the Library. 
• Research centres, institutes and chairs are also diverse, and will be considered in the 'Research centres' phase of the WIP2 project.
   

Centrally authored content:

• Some types of content will be 'authored' centrally, then pulled through to faculty areas and school areas (and other relevant locations) via keyword tagging. This includes faculty and school news and events; and all staff profiles. 
  

Linkages

Faculty and school content that is on the mainsite will be clearly discoverable from within the faculty areas and school areas.  

• Graphic/promo links will be integrated into the design.
• Text links will be integrated into the content.

Design

• The faculty areas and school areas will have a new design that is engaging and appealing, matches the homesite and works well on mobile devices.

Content improvement

• Most of the content that is currently on faculty and school sites will be improved as part of the project. Skilled web editors will ensure it is focused on its target audiences and written in plain language. It will be formatted for online readers, have more visual elements and be more engaging. 
• 'Features' (eg, student experience and project profiles) will be rationalised: we'll plan more carefully what they cover, align them more closely with News, and include more multimedia. We'll ensure they're always recent.
• 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 schools.

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 students.

School area

Purpose

• Provide a profile of the school and its activities, demonstrating its strengths.
• Provide a base for school-specific study and research material and information for current students. (Longer term, this may live in a student learning area of the homesite.)

Audiences

Home

Content

The content outline below represents a general example of what a school area might contain. While some content will be in all school areas (eg, Introduction, What we do), other content won't be required by all schools - and some schools may have additional content needs.

About us

Student info

Purpose: School-specific information for current students by coursework and research students.

Content will vary by school - below is indicative only.

(Note that longer term, study and research material and resources may live in a student learning area of the homesite.)
 

Links

Faculty area

Purpose

• Provide a profile of the faculty, including its purpose, roles and responsibilities; structure and affiliations.
• Enable staff in different roles at the faculty to be easily identified and contacted. 

Audiences

Home

Content

The content outline below represents a general example of what a school area might contain. While some content will be in all school areas (eg, Introduction, What we do), other content won't be required by all schools - and some schools may have additional content needs.

Links

Summary of approach

• Sections/areas, not separate sites.
• Much smaller and simpler - audience focused, clearly defined purpose.
• Content much more integrated with mainsite. Content exposed in key areas of site where visitors are looking at related material. Strong links from F and S areas.
• No content duplication.
• Flexible approach - 'local' content that has no logical home on mainsite remains on school site. 
• Aligned with mainsite approach for content 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').
  
  
  

Risks