Higher Education
Every college and university in the world faces one common challenge: recruiting new students.
But that's pretty much where the similarities end. Institutions are as unique and diverse as the communities they serve. So the message you deliver must be exclusive to your school, and your site must be a reliable source of information for everyone who uses it.
Anyone who works in higher education knows it's a whole different ballgame from a corporate environment. Nothing gets done without a committee. You have to wrangle dozens if not hundreds of independently managed websites under your school's brand.
And yet nowhere is the total brand experience more important for attracting the best students, growing enrollment, increasing alumni engagement and promoting research.
Read the latest of what we've learned about delivering great experiences for higher education.
NewCity Suggests:
Workshop: Web Design Without Politics
I gave a presentation at Eduweb in Chicago in July 2009 titled "Web Design Without Politics." I showed 6 techniques we've learned or developed to help a group of people from across an institution plan their website together in a short period of time. And not fight about it later.
I'll be teaching it again in September at EdUI in Charlottesville, VA.
Carewords results from Imperial College
I wrote in January about the work we're doing for Imperial College Research Support. Research Support serves academics and administrative staff as they pursue research funding and manage ongoing research projects. They came to us because people found their site difficult to navigate, and they wanted to streamline the user experience. As part of that effort we conducted a Carewords survey to get a better idea of what people are looking for when they come to the site. Read on for the results of…
Doing a Carewords Survey for Imperial College London
We're working on a user experience project right now for Imperial College London's Research Support group. This group serves the needs of academics and administrative staff on the Imperial College campus as they pursue funding for research and manage ongoing research contracts. As part of the project we are conducting a Carewords Survey, which is an approach developed by Gerry McGovern for identifying the top tasks of your site visitors. You can see the actual survey we set up for Imperial…
White Paper: Conducting a Higher Ed Site Audit
In conjunction with our presentations during the summer of 2008 at Eduweb and CASE Europe, we have published a white paper describing a research-based approach to conducting a site audit for higher education web sites.
Here's the abstract:
What if you could find 20 ways to dramatically improve your school's website with only a few hours of work?…
David and Pamela’s Eduweb 2008 Presentation
Pamela Michael, Head of Digital Media and Marketing at Imperial College London, and I had the privilege of presenting this week at Eduweb 2008 in Atlantic City. It was held at the lovely (cough, cough) Trump Marina Casino.
We shared a case study from the Imperial College London website redesign, including how we researched the needs of various audiences and created mental models that guided our designs.
Skoolpool cool – Facebook connection for students & colleges
I traveled to Eduweb 2008 this week in Atlantic City (Pamela Michael of Imperial College London and I gave a presentation) and saw some cool new ideas for higher education and the web. One of those is SkoolPool. It's a Facebook application that allows:
- Colleges to create profile pages within Facebook, and
- Students to create lists of schools…
The Results.
Results that speak.
“We’ve learned a lot from NewCity that we didn’t necessarily expect. We’ve learned how to run our own user testing exercise; we’ve learned different methods for mapping our user journeys through the site; so the skills we’ve picked up from the team I think we’ll be using for many years to come.”
- Pamela Agar, Head of Digital Media and Marketing
Imperial College London
