Introduction

The web project team at Victoria University is working on an overhaul of their main marketing website. A new solution for the undergraduate content has been developed, grouping content by broad topics before delving into degrees and courses.

Because postgraduate students often have different requirements and drivers to undergraduate students, more research was required to ensure postgraduate students’ needs are adequately met.

Sixtyproof have worked with the Victoria University project team to help define the user needs for postgraduate content, and provide recommendations for a solution.

Project goal

Develop a strategy outlining how to structure and manage postgraduate content on the Victoria University website to better serve prospective students.

Research findings

Broadly, the undergraduate solution will also work for postgraduate students, but will require some changes to content.

Our approach

We talked to three students about their experiences in applying for postgraduate study, and three groups of staff about their dealings with postgraduate students:

Julie – in her first year of studying a Masters of International Relations part-time, in her 50s/60s, currently contracting part-time to Forest and Bird.
Li – in his first year of studying a Masters of Drug Discovery and Development, moved to New Zealand from China, came with his wife after she was accepted into PhD study in NZ.
Thomas – in his first year of studying a Masters of Political Science part-time, currently working at the Department of Corrections, who is paying for half of his course fees because his study relates to his current role.
Staff members at Victoria, including faculty, student support and Victoria International support staff.

We also ran a card sorting task to help define the key areas of interest to prospective postgraduate students. This task had a small sample size, n=12.

Our findings

There were four main themes that came out of the research.

1. Undergrad solution will work for postgrad too

Our participants reacted positively to the work being done for the undergrad content. They understood the rationale behind it, and generally felt that using the same approach for postgrad content would not cause problems for potential postgrad students.

Current approach of UG is to separate content out by the user’s frame of mind, such as:

Interest me in this subject area (Architecture: About / People)
Tell me about studying this subject at Victoria (Architecture: Study options)
Now tell me about one specific programme (Bachelor of Architectural Studies – BAS: About)
I’m interested, what’s required by this programme (Bachelor of Architectural Studies – BAS: Requirements)

This creates a great framework for postgraduate content. Postgraduate students are generally more sure of what they want to study, but not always aware of the different options available to them, or how they compare to other options. Starting from a broad subject area before narrowing it down should allow them to more easily see the range of options.

Conclusions:

No need to develop a different solution for postgraduate content, as long as issues raised in other key themes are resolved.

2. Help me work out which option is best

Most postgraduate students know which subject they want to study, but are not clear on the different programmes. Sometimes similar or related programmes are owned by different faculties, so the current content structure makes it difficult to see and compare all options. For example, one student was trying to decide between Masters in International Relations and Masters in Development Studies, with no easy way to compare the two.

There is also little visibility of “stepping stone” programmes, so students can incorrectly assume that they are unable to study their preferred subject, because they don’t meet the criteria for the main programme.

Conclusions:

There’s a need for a solution to make it easier to compare and find related programmes, eg:

side-by-side analysis of programmes
a way to surface related subjects, including “stepping stone” options.

3. Help me make contact with the right staff

Prospective postgraduate students generally require more contact with staff prior to applying to study – their needs are more varied than undergrads and some areas of postgraduate study require supervision or staff expertise in a chosen research area.

Interviews with Victoria staff identified that some faculty members don’t want to be contacted by students. Staff profiles are not always kept up to date, and it’s not often clear who the best person to contact is from the list of staff, or even if it’s ok to contact staff directly. There’s no obvious way to search on staff expertise, other than clicking into individual staff profiles.

Conclusions:

Staff profiles must be kept up to date, especially contact details and areas of expertise.
Showing staff availability for supervision is useful – having an indication of ‘this staff member is/is not available for supervision’.
Make it clear that students are encouraged to contact staff directly, and show who the best person to contact is in the first instance.
If some staff are not willing or able to be contacted, make it clear which staff members can be contacted.
Consider a way to make areas of expertise easier to see (irrespective of which staff member has that expertise).

Summary of previous supervision could be useful (eg, ‘Supervision and Teaching’: http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/learning/departments/school-of-psychology/staff/staff-all.cfm?stref=898830).

4. I don’t know what you mean by ‘Professional’

The label ‘Professional’ on some postgraduate programmes is ambiguous.

Various understandings on its meaning in PG context were heard, such as hinting at programmes that result in registration with a professional body or that it is more ‘applied’ learning and leads to a career rather than more ‘academic’ learning that leads to a PhD.
Staff agree it is not used consistently in the university.
Based on this three-point description from Victoria’s School of Business, the ‘professional’ label usually relates to flexibility:

Flexibility with timetabling to allow students to keep up work commitments while studying
Flexibility on programme choice and resulting qualification through staircasing
Flexibility on entry requirements meaning that students might be able to substitute work/life experience for undergraduate study.

Conclusions:

Consider defining and implementing consistent use of the word university-wide.

General feedback

Some things our interviewees told us that might be useful:

Provide notice of wider benefits of postgraduate study, eg being invited to restricted or private events with influential people, being part of the wider faculty staff.
Would like more obvious timetable information (especially for students who wish to still work while studying).
Fee information was unclear, eg the compulsory student association levy was not included in the price online that one student based her decision on, she was not aware of this cost until her invoice was received and this upset her.
A PhD has very high intrinsic value which appears to transcend reasons given for other PG study (such as higher earning potential, interest in the subject, etc.) All students interviewed referred to their ‘goal’ or ‘hope’ to do a PhD.

Recommendations

1. Make the starting point clearer

Improve the IA by changing the entry point to postgraduate content from programme-based to subject- or previous-qualification-based

One key difference in the undergrad and postgrad audiences is their entry point to the content. While many undergraduates need time to explore areas of study (from tourism management to biomedical science), postgraduate students are generally more likely to need help deciding which programme in their preferred subject is the right one for them.

We recommend applying the structure developed for the undergraduate solution, with variances specific to postgraduate requirements, eg:

under the ‘Study options’ tab, as well as surfacing all related programmes, ensure stepping stone options are clearly visible and explained
under the ‘People’ tab, consider surfacing key staff contacts and expertise, rather than student stories
add timetable information, so prospective students can see what they can fit around work commitments.

We also recommend further research to define how the wider Programmes and courses IA should work.

The current user journey to find Postgraduate content is confusing, eg:

> Future students > Programmes and courses > Postgraduate programmes

Leads prospective students to programmes defined by qualification type — many would not know where to start.

> Future students > Programmes and courses > Explore areas of study > Subject

No clear signal that this covers postgraduate content. The pathway to get here — via Future students — feels focussed on prospective undergraduate students, and use of the word ‘Explore’ feels wrong for postgrad students, as most know which subject they’re interested in.

Research completed so far is not enough to define an improved future state — we can work with you to develop this using tree testing and card sorting tools if required.

2. ‘Let me compare options’

Create standardised templates on an equal level of the IA to help students compare programmes

Creating a standardised template for programmes will help users compare between programmes. They should be able to see at a glance the specifics of a programme (eg, its structure, delivery method and duration).

The theme of the card sorting task we ran was: ‘What will it be like to study this course?’. Factors consistently deemed important in making the decision to study postgrad were course content, programme structure (research vs coursework), teaching staff and delivery method. Ensuring that these have prominence in the programme template is important.

The programme templates should be positioned on the same level of the IA, rather than buried within separate faculty sites, to enhance this cross-programme comparison. More work needs to be done on the IA to make specific recommendations.

3. ‘Point me in the right direction’

Create clear next steps for an interested student to take

Pathways to applying for postgrad are varied and might require more contact with a staff member than applying for undergrad. Students we spoke to all communicated to faculty staff before applying, but it isn’t always clear that this is a valid and expected way to enquire further about postgrad study.

Staff profiles

Investigate a better solution to surface contact, availability and expertise details of key staff members. This may include work on existing profiles, and/or the research expertise directory.

Ideally this should be a flexible solution allowing separate profiles to be surfaced in different areas, eg at topic level under People and/or at course level.

Reduce button usage

Current undergraduate content templates contain many buttons (typically 6 buttons, a mixture of blue and grey, on an About page for a programme page). This creates mixed messages on what the next logical action is.

We recommend reducing the number of buttons to 2 per page, a primary (blue) and secondary (grey) action. Other important links, such as Scholarship information and Exploring other areas of study, should take a more standard link approach.