College and university web sites used to be pretty simple to manage. You threw up everything that anyone would possibly want and then hope for the best. Um…yep…that pretty much got out of control quickly for most web managers and the audience said “Hey! Wait! We can’t find a thing on your web site.” But never to be thwarted, web managers had a pretty nifty way of correcting the problem. We simply divided our web sites up into sections geared toward audiences (and a lot of us just threw up a page with a list of links we thought each audience might use). That worked pretty well—for a while.
We are all starting to think differently about college and university web sites, now. We may have finally figured out that our web sites can’t be all things to all people.
At Plymouth State University, where I am Web Administrator, that’s exactly the philosophy I adopted. I can’t force the web site to be everything for everyone. Instead, our recently redesigned web site focuses on prospective students and their families first and foremost (with prospective staff, faculty and our community right behind that). Ideally, our web site is now for people who say “Plymouth what? What’s that? Where’s that?” or, people who have no relationship with the University. Those with relationships (faculty, staff, alumni and students) we are driving more and more to our intranet, myPlymouth.
There’s a ton of gray area with a strategy like this. There are a lot of mini-sites who appeal to both internal and external audience members (news, athletics for example). Unfortunately, there will always be a fuzzy line between the two camps.
This isn’t a perfect strategy and PSU is still in the infancy of its implementation, but I’m see more and more institutions moving in this direction. A slimmer web site=better usability and better “findability”.
No promises this is the correct strategy but we’ll see what happens.
Share This
Posted in Web Design, Higher Education | No Comments »
I’m not afraid to admit, I’m a little intimidated by the Second Life buzz. At the same time, the techno-geek in me thinks it is the evolution of the Internet we’ve been waiting for. Forget Web2.0 or 3.0….it’s metaverse all the way. This is of particular interest to the academic world. If we embrace this, there is no doubt in my mind the next generation of Second Life will have a huge impact on academic communication.
Consider these statistics about Second Life right now in 2007:
So what? It’s a whole new way of communication. Imagine raising funds for the new campus building by demonstrating a virtual prototype donors can tour, allowing prospective students to conduct online virtual admission interviews and tour your virtual campus without ever leaving the comfort of their home, students participating in online courses, or alumni mini-reunions and gatherings.
Think it’s crazy? Far-fetched. Yep, I hear you–it’ll never happen. Problem is, it already has.
- Vassar College has created Vassar Island for social gatherings.
- Santa Clara University has debuted its future Library in Second Life.
- Harvard Law School offered the following course in the metaverse: “CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion,”
More than 100 universities and colleges have some presence in Second Life, though it is clearly more experimental than functional at this point.
“I’m waiting to see colleges start leveraging SL as a recruiting tool,” says C. C. Chapman, vice president of New Marketing at crayon, a real-life marketing company based in SL, and the former digital marketing manager at Babson College (Mass.). Chapman thinks IHEs should integrate SL into their overall outreach strategy by showing their viewbooks or offering live conversation with admission staff in-world.
Second Life in its current iteration has a few bugs and glitches (it’s still pretty picky about the equipment/computer you use to access and has had its fair share of down-time lately), but I’m betting that as more Fortune 500 companies make their mark in the metaverse, other technology companies will start taking notice. Anyone else imagining a Google Earth like metaverse? If that happens, hold on to your hat because we’re in for another wild ride.
Share This
Posted in Higher Education | No Comments »