Comments on: Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive Web presence

By: links for 2009-08-10 « innovations in higher education

links for 2009-08-10 « innovations in higher education — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:10:53 +0000

[...] Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive Web presence … (tags: webdesign universities bestpractices university policy standards design highered redesign) [...]

By: lifestream for 2009-04-01 - silverberry.org

lifestream for 2009-04-01 - silverberry.org — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:47:48 +0000

[...] Bookmarked a link on Delicious. Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive Web presence | .eduGuru [...]

By: Ric Dragon

Ric Dragon — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:41:59 +0000

Great post, Rachel. All of those issues we face in this context seem to fall into 2 camps – the technical, and the cultural. The template falls into the technical… and whether is is designed for flexibility is critical… , and then for the various providers of content, creating an environment, or culture, where content can flow in.

By: Melissa Cheater

Melissa Cheater — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:19:17 +0000

Rachel – thanks for this article (your post about @tsand agreeing/disagreeing brought me to it). This is strong advice that can be applied even outside of higher ed (although he is rather famous for fragmented sites :) )

On an odd note, one of the few (the only) sites in Canada that have a consistent template through their entire site is the Ontario College of Art & Design (but it helps that they only have two faculties to deal with … art, and design).

By: Fragmented Web Experiences and Frustrated Web Designers

Fragmented Web Experiences and Frustrated Web Designers — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:13:27 +0000

[...] a great conversation going on at EduGuru on the topic of “outliers”. Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive Web presence …Along they way they bounce through three additional department Web sites, but the [...]

By: Rachel Reuben

Rachel Reuben — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:43:27 +0000

@Mike McCready I have a part-two post coming Thursday called “Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive social media presence.” :)

I don’t think a student run radio station falls under this umbrella. I don’t think they should use the university-wide template. They should, however, make it clear they’re part of the university, but there are other visual ways to accomplish that. I think the template is best for academic/administrative programs and departments.

If you don’t have a central Web team, this gets tricky. And messy. Do you have a campus-wide Web committee of some sort? The academic courseware team would benefit from using common elements – but are likely dependent on the product they use.

By: Mike McCready

Mike McCready — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:25:19 +0000

I agree with you Rachel. I think that the branding, messaging and experience should be consistent across the board. That being said, I think that certain areas like Athletics, Admissions, etc. can have an experience that is set apart from the rest of the experience providing that there is continuity. At our college we use CMS and have a consistent template across the board but are looking at the possibility of mini-sites to promote various key areas of the college. These mini-sites would maintain the experience and messaging but provide some variety.

I also think that this ‘Reining in the outliers’ could be applied to social networks to ensure consistent messaging and branding is applied to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

My question I would like to pose is this: How to you handle the reining in when the product is considered an academic product (i.e. a student run radio station) and is being developed outside the web team by the academic courseware team?

Great comments by the way and I’ll be passing this on :)

By: Seth Meranda

Seth Meranda — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:46:43 +0000

As a member of an institution (unl.edu) that went through this process in 2006, the best advice I can convey is the phrase from Teddy Roosevelt: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

We presented on this at HighEdWeb 2007, you can find out presentation at: http://wdn.unl.edu/downloads/20071016_hewd07.pdf

By: Kati Davis

Kati Davis — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:41:03 +0000

Rachel – great post! SO MANY institutions that struggle with this so I’m bookmarking this to share with them. It’s very frustrating to have to re-familiarize yourself with whatever navigation a department has deemed necessary OR become trapped because there is not a link back to previous tiers (or even the home page).

Can you think of exceptions to this rule? Sometimes institutions have a much more “edgy” admissions site or the graduate school has its own look and feel. Like Todd mentioned, Art is always one that tends to push back on this because they want it to be a representation of the work they produce. I would definitely have to have my arm twisted hard because I’m not convinced it’s a good approach unless done well…and not by a graduate assistant or whomever who has a knack for HTML and Photoshop.

I also just noticed the stat you posted that “38% using a site to match them to us like Zinch, MyCollegeOptions, College Board.” Do you think it’s because these sites provide consistency and to the point information? Are institutional sites offering too much info that they go elsewhere to get the basics?

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:50:10 +0000

If I went to an Art dept site and it looked like this (http://www.newpaltz.edu/schoolofbusiness) then “University X” would be off my short list, no matter how many times they went to the Final Four. Just sayin, my opinion, feel free to disagree.