Key messages for new faculty and school areas

Current state of faculty and school sites

Staff said:

Tired design 

• Tired, complex, unattractive and difficult to use.
  

Too much content 

• Too much on most pages and too many layers of page. Maintenances is time consuming so time-sensitive information is often out of date. Quality suffers. (e.g. spelling mistakes, links that don't go anywhere).

Content management is challenging

• Lack of time and resources (especially writers) for web content. Too little time for many to become/stay proficient in Squiz.
  

Most staff can't maintain their profiles 

• Difficult to maintain, so are often out of date. Very dated/tired look. Gives a poor impression of the University.

Too many channels

• Too many channels with the same information as the web (and as each other). Students still miss information despite repeat listings. Would like social media listed more prominently.

Make analytics more widely available

• Needs to be more widely accessible and used, especially data on goal conversions.

Site search gives poor results

• Site search doesn't always give useful results. Results are often dominated by courses and not what really matters.

Research approach

• • Workshops with representative staff members from all faculties and some schools, augmented by one-to-one conversations with senior general and academic staff.
  • Views above represent those present and are not necessarily true or held by all staff.
  • As such, this information is input to our decision making, not necessarily what we propose to do.

Students said: 

Why are they different?

• Future and current undergraduate students didn't understand that faculty and school sites existed as separate sites "This should all be one thing – school, faculty and Victoria. We are one university and there is no reason why it can’t all be together."

Very low engagement

•  With faculty and school sites only used for a few things (to find a person, get course info, access a shortcut to a tool (via the header menu)). 
  

Use site search to find staff profiles

• This avoids having to know in what school to look for somebody, but has the unintended consequence of missing content placed on f&s home pages because the administrators believe people will be interested in it.

Prefer email and Blackboard

• As channels for information from Victoria, with all students also following relevant pages on Facebook.
  

Postgraduate students had greater awareness

• That faculty and school had separate sites, but still had a very narrow information need (staff profiles, administrative services, forms, etc).
  

Secondary school students didn't understand the roles

• Of faculties and of schools at all, let alone their web presence.

Research approach

• • User research interviews were held with six senior students from local secondary schools and with six current students in various years of study.

  • Views above represent those present and are not necessarily true or held by all staff.
  • As such, this information is input to our decision making, not necessarily what we propose to do.

Analytics said:

Faculty sites: 

• Are not busy, and the highest traffic areas are subjects, UG degrees, study information, and PG programmes. And much of this traffic comes from the subject and degree pages on Homesite.

School sites

• Are usually (but not always) less busy, and the highest traffic areas are staff profiles; research and (in some cases) resources for specific courses. And much of this traffic comes from the subject and degree pages on Homesite.
  
  

Data is from 1 July – 8 December 2015, with total page views exceeding 15,000,000

Future direction of the Victoria University website - www.victoria.ac.nz 

Represents a single organisation

• The Victoria University website represents a single (although complex) organisation and should look and behave accordingly. User needs that are met by the website can be met by any appropriate part(s). 
  

Information organised around user need

• The Victoria University website will is being reorganised around user need or task, with no expectation that users have prior knowledge of our organisational structure.
  

Reduced duplication of content

• There will be less duplication of content: Increasingly, information will have a single source yet be surfaced in multiple places according to need.
  

New technologies to augment Squiz 

• New technologies are being introduced that will augment Squiz, allowing us more choices and better solution options.
  

Site search will be improved

• Improvements to the site search will be undertaken as BAU, with priorities influenced by WIP2 need

Staff profiles will be redeveloped

• Improvements to staff profiles are in scope for WIP2, and the work will be performed by ITS, the Web Team and the project team.

Analytics will be shared for key pages

• Access to important analytics for key pages will be given to all users on our network via an info page (a sort of shadow or meta or derived page), allowing people to monitor how well the page is meeting its objectives/goals.. (e.g. see https://www.gov.uk/apply-uk-visa as an example of the web page and https://www.gov.uk/info/apply-uk-visa as an example of an info page).

Effectiveness of news and events will be improved

• The effectiveness of both News and Events is being considered and solutions discussed to bring about improvements.   

Keyword tagging to aide content reuse

• Keyword tagging will enable an item of content to be centrally authored then presented in relevant locations on the site ('reusable content').
  

Strengthen visible association with third party sites 

• Strengthen Victoria's association with related (staff and/or student) external sites, so that as an institution we gain the benefits of association with good work that our platform can't support.
  
  

Future shape of faculty and school web areas

Structure

Each with its own area or space

• Each faculty and each school will continue to have it's own area (or subsection or space), but no longer individual websites. 
• Upgrades and maintenance become easier, while still providing each f&s with it's own online space.
  

Audience determines purpose and content

• The faculty areas and school areas must be different from one another: Each has a clear purpose and identified target audiences, so the content should be different. They will be much simpler to use and maintain than currently.

Option of single blended area

• Faculties with only one school might prefer to have a single blended area and downplay the difference between the faculty and the school. Faculties where this might be suitable include Law, Engineering, and Education.
  

Design

 Modern design

• The faculty areas and school areas will have a new design that is engaging and works well on a mobile as well as larger screens (as we are presently doing with the subjects/topics and degrees.

Unified site

• They will be less distinct from each other as they are now which means users see the appearance of an single organisation. 
  

Content

 Information on core services on Homesite

• Content that is best viewed as information on core services offered by the university will be centrally located on Homesite.
• It can be surfaced on faculty and school sites as and when required) (e.g. the courses we offer, the subjects we teach, scholarships available).

In-common information on Homesite

• Content currently on these sites that follows a standard university approach (i.e. isn't unique or truly faculty-specific) will be located in the appropriate area of Homesite (e.g. student well-being and support will be located in 'Current students'). 
• The driving reason for this is a desire to make orient our website around the needs of our users, not our organisational structure.

Centralised location doesn't dilute influence 

• Content can be 'authored' centrally, with faculty/school input/sign-off, displayed on Homesite, and also displayed in faculty/school areas (e.g. topic pages, maybe programme pages).
• Content that is best located in one place to meet a user need can still be maintained by the appropriate people (e.g. Research centres, institutes and chairs could be located in the Research hub, surface on school sites, and be maintained by the same web administrators as now).

Content improvement

Refined and trimmed preferable to rewriting

• Most of the content that is currently on faculty and school sites will be moved pretty much as is, with some trimming and some rewriting depending on need and resourcing. 

Appropriate for audience

• Attention should be given to the needs of the target audiences and therefore the writing should be in appropriate language, formatted for online readers, have more visual elements and be more engaging. 
  

Features and profiles

• 'Features' (eg, student experience and project profiles) will be rationalised: We will consider carefully what they cover, and over time they will be more closely aligned with News, include more multimedia, and provided on a "reuse if possible" basis.

Content guidelines

• 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.

Linkages

• Faculty and school content that is on the Homesite 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.
  
  

Proposed faculty web areas

Audiences

Purpose

• Provide a profile of the faculty demonstrating its strengths and relevance to the key audience groups (see table below)
• Present the services offered by the faculty, including those on behalf of its composite schools and in activities that cross school boundaries. 
• Surface appropriate Homesite content in a faculty context (e.g. degrees and programmes, staff profiles).
• Surface appropriate school content in a faculty context (e.g. news, events).

Content

The content outline below represents a general example of what a faculty area might contain. While some content will be in all faculty areas (eg, Introduction, What we do), other content will only be needed by some faculties, and some faculties will require content not yet identified.

Home

About

Links

Questions

1. Should we consider a model where more of the action/glamour is at a faculty level (by including the aggregation of news and events from units within a faculty) and leave schools to handle supporting students? Why do we want a lite faculty site and have many more active school sites?
2. Where do we show research centres that are attached to faculty (not school) level?
   
   

Proposed school web areas

Purpose

• Provide a profile of the school and its services, demonstrating its strengths and relevance t  the key audience groups (see table below).
• Provide a base for school-specific study and research information for current students. (Note that over the medium term much of this could be moved to a student learning area of Homesite).
• Surface Homesite content as appropriate in a school setting.
  

Audiences

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.

Home

About us

Student information

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

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

Questions

1. I Student Information better labelled Supporting students in study and research?
2. Is Resources different or does it include Publications? Facilities? Forms?
3. What do we do when facilities are not necessarily for teaching/students but either for research or available to industry (e.g. specialised equipment)?
4. Where do we plan to put outputs from (historic) research funding?
5. Publications and forms seem to fit as well in Student Information as in About Us. Are there a subset there and others on About Us? references?
   
   

Summary of approach

• Each f&s has their own online space, with quality content (sometimes reused/resurfaced) tailored to meet the audience needs, well integrated with homesite.
  • More focused on the audience needs, with a clearly defined and distinct purpose.
  • Richer, more engaging and more recent content.
  • Content much more integrated/aligned with Homesite (i.e. strong links to and even content surfaced from Homesite.
  • Focus is on the audience context for showing content and building a relationship between existing content, not the duplication of it.
  • Flexible approach - 'local' content that has no logical home on Homesite remains on school site. 
  • Aligned with Homesite approach for content increasingly 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