Status: APPROVEDFINAL

Related: 

Topic page: Content strategy

Interviews

We’ll be writing new content. To create this, we'll carry out short one-to-one interviews with the main subject-matter expert (SME) in the relevant school.

We'll ask the faculty manager or school managers to help us identify who to work with. Ideally, we'll only work with one person - such as a HOS or programme director. But for complex topics, we may need to interview several academic staff members.

What we'll need from them:

• • Interview (book 1 hour).
  • Review the draft and provide feedback.
  • Approve the final version. 

We'll record the interviews unobtrusively (but with consent). 

Managing the review process

We'll be communicating the following message, to help manage the scope of the review:

The topic page has been tightly written for online readers, with a focus on the target audience and a marketing approach. While feedback about the tone/style is welcome, what we are seeking from your review is confirmation that:

• it reflects Victoria’s strengths in this discipline (as relevant to a secondary student)
• the wording is accurate (while allowing for the use of ‘everyday’ language that makes sense to a secondary student)
• you’re happy with the way the media items (stories and project examples) have come together.

We'll also communicate this message, to help manage the number of reviewers:

• Past experience indicates that review works best when it’s carried out by just one or two people:  when a document is circulated widely, successive layers of diverse input can increase the risk of the document losing its purpose and focus. Also, the timeframe and amount of negotiation required increases significantly. For those reasons, we’d prefer it if you could carry out the review - perhaps consulting with the comms advisor where necessary. (Please get in touch if you’d like to propose an alternative approach.)
  
  

Interview questions

As with our research with students, this can be much more conversational than it appears here.

Interview script below: last updated 29 October 2015

Post-interview tasks

People and stories

Cover:

• Student experiences
• Student work examples
• Alumni stories
• Lecturer profiles 

Approaching faculties and schools

Engagement approach

See Attachments page for the planned approach to engagement

Email text

The emails that will be used are in the documents below:

Email 1: Set up interviews

Email 2: Book meeting with HOS

Emails 3 and 4: Review and approval

Socialising the topic page concept

Before we start content work with faculties and schools, the WIP2 project manager will meet with them to explain the broader project, topic groupings and the concept of the topic page. The notes below may help - please also see the topic page content strategy.

About the project

We're working to improve information about subjects and programmes on Victoria's website.

Our research

We assessed existing Subject pages on the Victoria website and in our publications, and noted the following:

• Most provide very little space (between a couple of sentences and a few paragraphs) to tell students why they should study that discipline at Victoria.
• There are over 140 subject pages that prospective students must look through.

We reviewed the websites of other universities to see how they approach discipline information online.

We talked to school leavers to understand what they want to know when they visit a university website.

We created a content strategy for online subject information that better meets their information needs and allows us to engage and inspire them. 

What's changing?

Subjects are being grouped with other subjects into thematic pages we call 'topic' pages. These provide a compelling overview of what Victoria has to offer in the discipline, detail on each subject that sits within it, and information on careers.

The information about degree and major rules that is currently on subject pages will be moved to the relevant degree pages, so students don't need to be across multiple locations to figure out how their degree will work. 

Topic pages will be simple and engaging. They will provide a clear information pathway to relevant degrees, or to course planning advice.

Topic pages with multiple subjects have four sections: A general 'About' section; a 'Subjects' section with information about each individual subject; 'Careers' (by subject); and 'People and stories'. 

The subjects section may be omitted on topic pages that describe just one subject.