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:
How branding can change the core experience of a college
Ted Long, president of Elizabethtown College, and Tim Westerbeck, principal of Lipman Hearne, presented a case study on the rebranding of Elizabethtown College at the AMA Symposium for Higher Education this week. President Long's leadership, Lipman Hearne's insight, and the College's courage led them to a transformation that has impacted not only how Elizabethtown thinks and talks about itself, but the experience they deliver. I was excited to see this example of experience design in action.
…Takeaways from David’s EdUI Presentation on Twitter
Read takeaway tweets from David's "Beyond Blah Blah" workshop at EdUI this past Monday.
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…
The Results.
Results that speak.
"With our work over several marketing projects, New City has helped NSTA grow the usage of the NSTA Learning Center and engage strategic partners who have invested in the Learning Center."
- Al Byers, The National Science Teachers Association