WIPII is proposing that the main navigation path for Future Students is Subjects => Programmes => Courses. As such, we undertook some analysis to identify what our subjects are and how well they suit this marketing or recruitment purpose.
We have a lot of subjects. Even starting with only those subject listed on the website, there are too many. Although this could be defined as primarily an interface design issue, even with an improved design 124 is a large number. A few more can easily be removed, as they are alternative terms and “out of date” entries.
We also have a large number of publications listed in our publications, which seem to be largely derived from the 130 course code prefaces mastered in Banner). Although the number is similar there are many strange anomalies and mismatches.
Further, we have subjects listed on the school pages but without a corresponding offering to either of the above (e.g. performance music, petroleum geoscience, just to take a couple from the p’s).
In total, removing duplicates, obvious alternative terms and “out of date” offerings we have so far identified 126 subjects (there may be more and certainly an experienced staff member could rule more as synonyms/alternative terms). This raises a few questions that we would like to discuss with you?
- Can 17/18 year olds distinguish the difference between them all?
- Can we find appropriate content (for the new WIPII subject page) for each of them?
- Can we effectively promote/market this many subjects without distracting from or watering down the message on any one?
- Can we resource keeping all this content current?
Subjects, as currently used, appears a closer fit the teaching or academic need than to the marketing and recruitment one. Further, our core subject offering seems at odds with the mental model of most target users (i.e. Future Students).
We therefore decided to test this buy asking school students (as the largest source of Future Students) to gather these subjects in to like clusters or groups, currently referred to as “areas of study”
There seems to be some clusters of similar subjects (e.g. a music cluster comprising Classic performance, Composition, Jazz, Music, Music Studies, Music Therapy and Performance Music)
As such, there is a need to ask this stakeholder group what they think of our subjects.
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