Terminology

What is the issue?

Sessions held with secondary school students in July 2015 found a very clear and concerning trend: they don't understand most of Victoria's terminology and 'university concepts'. 

• Courses and programmes are probably the most significant.
  • All students understood and referred to 'papers' - but saw 'courses' in the way that we'd perhaps see a programme. This meant, for example, that they'd use the online 'Course finder' when they were seeking information about a degree - and might view the results (lists of courses) without understanding that they were individual papers.
  • Students didn't understand that a 'programme' is a 'degree'. When asked what a programme might be, they were vague ("Collection of things?" "Maybe a form of course that isn't a course?"). 
• Students tended to work out 'undergraduate' and 'postgraduate' - especially when seen together, as in the Course finder.
• They thought they knew what 'major' meant - kind of. They'd heard the word, anyway.
• Terms like 'Honors' and 'Masters' were also "vaguely familiar" - but they didn't know what they meant.
• Other comments: "What is internal assessment?" "How do trimesters work?" 
• They wanted words like 'co-requisites' and 'restrictions' to be explained.
• No student used the word 'accommodation' - instead, they used words like housing, dorms and houses.
  

All the students found course codes and levels, the points system, and how to put together a degree confusing and frustrating.

• "Assumes prior knowledge."
• "Would need to go elsewhere to look that up, then come back."

What are the implications?

Terminology was a significant barrier for the secondary school students when trying to find out about study options at Victoria. We believe that improving the user-friendliness of our web content will result in an increase in undergraduate enrolments: anecdotal evidence suggests that 'window shoppers' are likely to look at several university websites, then progress their interest with the one that is easiest to understand.  

Ideally, these improvements would flow into other university communications too - such as our print publications. 

Discussion and recommendations 

Who is affected?

Our terminology is likely to be difficult for these audiences:

• Secondary students
• Their parents
• Careers advisors
• International
• Mature / returning / transferring.

Victoria is believed to be the only university in New Zealand that uses 'courses' instead of 'papers' and 'trimesters' instead of 'semesters'. 

How can we address the issue?

1. Nigel has been asked to request a university-wide change to replace the word 'course' with 'paper' (over time). He has initiated this. 
2. On 'first contact' pages for secondary students, such as topic pages and undergrad degree pages, we'll do the following: 

• • Explain a term the first time it occurs on the page. Examples: 

    • You’ll need to enrol in six courses. (A ‘course’ is a ‘paper’ at Victoria.)

    • You must get 360 points from the courses (‘papers’) you study. 

    • The Bachelor of Architectural Studies (BAS) is a three-year undergraduate (‘first’) degree.
       

  • When the term can't be explained (eg, because it's in a heading, form label or similar), we'll use words that don't have terminology or replace the term with a word the user would understand. Example:

  • Replace 'Course options' with 'What you might study'
     

• • Glossarise the term the first time it occurs on the page – eg: You’ll need to enrol in six courses [print] or You’ll need to enrol in six courses [web] (rollover).

This approach should be documented in the Web Team's Style Guide, and socialised with faculties and schools as we rewrite their content.