Web Team

If you’re a regular of this blog, you know that I try to be as flexible as possible with registration deadlines for Higher Ed Experts webinar series.

If I get a few requests to postpone the deadline a bit, I always try to accommodate people who want to sign up at the last minute. Well, I got a couple of those again last Thursday and decided to postpone the registration deadline of the upcoming Website Redesign Boot Camp Series (April 21, 22 and 23) for a week, until this Friday (April 17) at 9PM ET.

If you have a big or small website redesign in your future, you don’t want to miss this 3-webinar series presented by Stewart Foss from eduStyle, Tonya Pricer from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Nick DeNardis from Wayne State University and EDU Checkup.

The series was designed to give you a great jump start on the latest trends in web redesign, lessons learned on redesigns coupled with CMS implementation and DIY web redesign for smaller projects.

Need another incentive to register? Here we go:

Our speaker Stewart Foss (who is also one of the authors of the eduStyle book) has agreed to give away one of his $99 web page reviews to the lucky institution whose name will be drawn among all the webinar attendees at the end of the series.

This is a great opportunity to start your redesign project with an evaluation done by a knowledgeable outside expert.

Registered institutions to the Web Redesign Boot Camp Webinar Series include:

Union University
Duke University
SUNY Oswego
UNC Wilmington
Hope College
Upper Iowa University
Holyoke Community College
CSU Monterey Bay
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Johnson County Community College
Wayne State College
The New School
Riverside Community College
Edinboro University
Northwestern Health Sciences University
Suffolk University
Penn State Behrend
Richard Stockton College of NJ
The University of Texas at Austin
Eastern New Mexico University
University of Colorado at Boulder
The George Washington University

Registration is now open until April 17, 2009 but will close as soon as the limited remaining places are filled. So, it’s a good idea to register as soon as possible at www.higheredexperts.com/webredesign

And, if you have any questions, just email me at karine@collegewebeditor.com

Website redesigns can be very, very scary projects.
People don’t like change, especially on “their” homepage.

That’s why you should prepare as much as possible before jumping into a website redesign (whether it’s for a university, college, department or even an office).

You can find some tips in a column I wrote for University Business in December 2006 – and you should also make sure to get your hands on the April issue of University Business as my next column provides great tips and tools to redesign on a dime.

But, if you want/need more help, why not register for “Website Redesign Boot Camp – the On-A-Dime edition,” a 3-webinar series scheduled next month?

“Website Redesign Boot Camp: What you need to know before jumping into a redesign project”

This 3-webinar series will help you get ready for your next (or first) big (or small) website redesign by providing some insights into the latest design trends in higher ed, guidance to prepare your project and useful advice to make sure you know what to expect from this type of high-risk projects.

April 21, 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: April 28, 2009)
Top trends in higher ed redesigned websites
Stewart Foss, Web Services Manager Founder of EduStyle and co-author of The eduStyle Guide to Usable Higher Ed Homepage Design, will present the latest trends in higher ed web design identified among the best redesigned websites (homepage, departmental, admissions, etc.) in 2008.

April 22, 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: April 29, 2009)
Website Redesign & CMS Implementation: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Tonya Price, Director, Marketing and Web Operations at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, will share what went bad in WPI redesign coupled with a CMS implementation and how her team managed to overcome these challenges. She will also present her recipe to prepare, manage and survive any big website redesign project that will come your way.

April 23, 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: April 30, 2009)
Web Redesign on a dime in 10 steps
Nick DeNardis, Associate Director of Web Communications at Wayne State University and Founder of the video blog EDU Checkup, will explain how his team managed to complete 25 successful website redesigns for different departments and offices. He will share best practices and lessons learned as well as his 10 steps plan to redesign a small website on a dime.

Registration is open until April 9, 2009 and places are limited, so it’s always a good idea to register as soon as possible at www.higheredexperts.com/webredesign

And, if you have any questions, just email me at karine@collegewebeditor.com

First, let me start with a disclaimer:

I’ve just received and browsed my electronic review copy of The eduStyle Guide to Usable Higher Ed Homepage Design (email arrived a bit before 6AM this morning). I knew it was supposed to be released any day now, but I had no clue when it would hit my inbox.

Stewart Foss, one of the co-authors of this brand new book (who will present the first of the 3 webinars about Web Redesign offered in April by Higher Ed Experts), and I have been talking about the book for a couple of months now as I wanted to mention it in my column about Web Redesign to be published in the April issue of University Business (which was due to my editor on Feb 1st).

Writing a book is always a bold move and I think the Foss brothers have done a very good job with this first 95-page volume, a book inspired by and written for the eduStyle community as well as the higher ed web professionals.

So, here’s my 1-1-1 Express Book Review for The eduStyle Guide to Usable Higher Ed Homepage Design (electronic version available now for $39.99) by Stewart, Cody and Andy Foss:

1 (bunch of) things I liked:

Instead of focusing on design mistakes, the authors have decided to review only 20 of the best web homepages among the 2,700 referenced in the eduStyle gallery. They explain what works, why and offer some pieces of advice to improve on great web design.

I especially like the profile page that precedes every web design analysis. It includes some quick facts about the institution, the file size of the homepage and the number of different files and types necessary to come up with the end result.

I also love the sidebar where they referenced other comparable institutions that you can find in the book (with their respective page numbers). You can look for comparable institutions by size, geographic area and type (private vs. public).

Here’s a 6-page excerpt in PDF format that will give you a good idea of what I mean above.

1 thing I didn’t like that much:

The recommendations and tips for good practices are available for each of the 20 reviewed websites. I would have loved to be able to get those nuggets of design wisdom listed in another section of the book – at the end for easy reference. There is an index, so it’s possible to find your way and this is just a tiny thing.

1 big take-away from the book:
Successful homepage web design can take many forms. While there are some common features in the 20 homepages reviewed in this book, they all have their unique web design.

So, go buy this electronic version (email me first at karine@collegewebeditor.com today to request a discount code that will get you 10% off the book – what would have been my affiliate fee had I decided to sign up for the book affiliate program) – and if you want to get the print version, here’s what the Foss brothers have in store for you as explained in an email they sent this morning to folks who registered to get the early bird pricing

We expect the print version to be ready in the next two weeks. Once released we’ll offer a $19.99 US credit toward the purchase of the print version to anyone who couldn’t wait and bought the electronic version early.

Oh, and if you are wondering which institutions are featured in the book, here’s the complete list:

• Biola University
• Boston University
• University of California, Riverside
• Case Western Reserve University
• Champlain College
• Concordia University, St. Paul
• Cornell University
• Denver Seminary
• Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
• The University of Louisville
• Loyola Marymount University
• Marylhurst University
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• North Carolina State University
• University of Notre Dame
• Portland State University
• Rice University
• Saxion Universities of Applied Sciences
• University of St. Thomas
• The College of William & Mary

Have you checked out the book yet? Tell us what you think (good or bad) by posting a comment.

If you’ve read my last UB column — “It’s the Community, Stupid!” — you know my take on how to develop thriving online communities and how important it is to empower what I called “super users,” your most engaged community members.

Here’s a real-life example of what this type of members can do for your brand.

Nick DeNardis, Assistant Director of Web Communications at Wayne University, has been a dedicated member of eduStyle, the higher ed web gallery managed by Stewart Foss, where he rated a lot of websites.

A couple of weeks ago, Nick decided to share his passion for eduStyle and the whole rating experience on camera by reviewing 3 websites he picked from the gallery.

In this video, eduStyle is featured front and center. After I watched Nick’s first video, I asked Stewart if he had suggested the idea to his community member. Stewart didn’t, which shows how passionate community members/users can push your brand further.

Beyond this point about communities, you should check out Nick’s videos (3 episodes as of today) now available on his brand new website, EDU Checkup. They provide a quick review of websites from different institutions.

Kind of 5-minute web audits. Interesting.

Even if we (I?) tend to focus on our little corner of the higher ed Web on a daily basis, that world is flat too. That’s why I’ve recently decided to open more this blog to initiatives, news and happenings taking place all around the world and not just in the US and Canada.

So, let’s start this journey with the UK and Brian Kelly who is the UK Web Focus at UKOLN, a prolific blogger and a conference organizer.

1) Your position at UKOLN as described on your blog looks like the dream job. Can you tell us a bit more about what you are doing?

Yes, it’s a great job, which I enjoy very much. I’ve been at UKOLN since November 1996 and have been employed as UK Web Focus since I started work here. I was one of the first Webmasters (as the role became known) in the UK, having helped to establish a Web service at the University of Leeds in January 1993 – this may have been the first institutional Web services in the UK, and when we registered it at CERN (the birthplace of the Web) we found that we were one of the first 50 organisations which had registered its service. I have to admit that although I could see the clear benefits that the web could provide to the university, I was concerned that the Web might not be sustainable in light of the popularity back then of Gopher. So I started to promote the benefits of the Web to an initially sceptical audience but eventually, of course, the benefits of the Web became obvious to everyone – and now, I suspect, very few people will have heard of Gopher.

My role at UKOLN is a national adviser on Web standards, technologies and best practices to UKOLN’s communities, which includes the higher and further education sector and the cultural heritage community of museums, libraries and archives.

After a somewhat dull period at the turn of the century, the advent of Web 2.0 has provided renewed interest in the Web and, as you will be aware, much debate on topics such as the sustainability of Web 2.0 services and the benefits they may provide within institutions. I’m very much enjoying the role I have to play in contributing to these discussions. My UK Web Focus blog provides the main channel for discussion on these issues. But in addition to my blog I also give many talks and organise events related to use of Web 2.0, as you can see from my list of presentations. The main annual event I established is the Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW) which was launched in 1997 and has been held every year since then.

I also write papers for peer-reviewed journals and conferences with these papers tending to focus on Web accessibility and the role of standards in delivering services. I should add that the papers do not necessarily simply reflect orthodox thinking in these areas: I have published a number of papers which have criticised the simplicities of WAI’s approach to Web accessibility and, together with fellow accessibility researchers and practitioners in the UK and Australia, have developed what we have referred to as a ‘holistic framework for accessibility’.

2) Do you think Web 2.0 technologies have changed the way higher ed institutions in the UK communicate with their target audiences?

We’re now seeing institutions making use of Social Networking services such as Facebook to communicate with both potential students and to facilitate communications within the institution. Edge Hill University was one of the first to describe why it was prepared to use such services, and this is now becoming more widely established, with the Open University (which has a presence on Facebook, YouTube and iTunes) demonstrating its belief in the organisational benefits such services can provide.

3) What is the main reason preventing these technologies from being more used by universities in the UK?

It would be easy to suggest that institutions may be conservative, citing concerns over the legal implications use of such services may entail and the sustainability of the services; arguments which could be used to justify concerns over a loss of control which could result from a use of such services.

However there are also very real and unresolved issues which do need to be treated seriously. It is not yet clear how stable and reliable such services may be in the longer term – especially in light of likely global recession. And it is not clear if the current popularity of such services will be sustainable in the longer term.

4) Can you share a few examples of innovative uses implemented by UK institutions?

I’ve mentioned Edge Hill University, which is being innovative in the ways in which it is making use of a variety of Web 2.0 services in order to appeal to students.

I should also mention the University of Bath, where I’m based. The University was awarded a European prize for its podcasts a couple of years ago. And just a few weeks ago the University Web Services team held a “Get Creative Week”. This aimed to provide team building and staff development within the team – and resulted in the development of a Facebook application which allows students to search for accommodation. This service is built on an existing commercial service, with the Facebook application providing an interface within an environment which many students will be familiar with. It will be interesting to see if this service proves popular with students at the University – and if it does it may demonstrate the value of the Facebook platform for providing an interface to various services for the student community.

I’ve taken some time this afternoon to set up something that is going to simplify your life if you’re actively looking for a new position in higher ed or just want to make sure you won’t miss your dream job one day.

As you might know, I launched in early July a free job board, www.higheredexperts.com/work, just for you (well, thousands of you, my dear readers, but still for you ;-)

This is a free service I wanted to provide to the higher ed community as it has given me so much over the past few years.

Since things have started to pick up with a few ads posted every week or so, I think it’s time to promote it more widely to job seekers, which is why I’ve been doing some tinkering this afternoon to offer several ways for you to receive the new job postings depending on your style and needs:

• Want to know about the latest postings within the hour they are posted on the job board?
  Follow @higheredexperts on Twitter. Thanks to twitterfeed (and Brad Ward’s tip), this is totally automated.
• Want to browse all the job listings in your favorite RSS reader?
  Subscribe to the RSS feed powered by Feedburner and you won’t miss a bit.
• You’re more an email-kind of person?
  No problem. You can subscribe to daily (that is only if something has been posted) updates thanks to Feedburner. The email message is usually sent before 9AM ET.
• You just want to be able to see the latest job ads by checking out your favorite blog?
  Well, in this case, there are 2 possibilities, right?
  • THIS blog is your favorite blog.
    Just check out the sidebar on the blog and you’ll see the 5 latest postings
  

  • You are a blogger yourself (which is the only reason why this one wouldn’t be your favorite, right ;-) and you want to check the latest jobs on YOUR blog.
    Just email me at karine@collegewebeditor.com and I’ll share the HTML/Javascript code of the widget powered by Feedburner (did I mention I love Feedburner?) I used on my sidebar.

I hope you’ll find in all these options something that works for you.

Now, can I ask you a favor to help me make the Higher Ed Experts’ job board a success?

Take 2 minutes today to tell your institution’s hiring managers or HR department about it, share its web address: www.higheredexperts.com/work on your favorite email listservs (well, check first that nobody has already done it) or even blog about it.

It’s free to post jobs, and – as you know now – easy to subscribe to receive updates.

Thanks for your help!

The University of Bath Web Services team didn’t expressively request any help, but if any higher ed web developer can provide some tips, it looks like it would be more than welcome as Phil Wilson hints in this blog post:

So, two days in, and dealing with FBML, the Facebook API and the low quality of the documentation has felt very much like playing a Grand Master at chess, only he won’t tell you the rules.

None of this is to say that we haven’t made progress of course (because we have!), but it has meant we’ve had to revise our initial plans to take account of what we’re finding possible to do within a week.

Something very interesting is going on this week for the members of this web services team as they are working on building Flat Out, a new Facebook application for the students of this university based in the UK as part of a 5-day-long team building initiative called “Get Creative” under Alison Wildish’s lead:

So last month I announced “Get Creative”. A week long project to work on as a team. A project that we would decide, scope and deliver together.

The aim being to break away from the norm, to establish new ways in which we could work together and to create something cool.

You can follow (as I have been since the beginning of this week) their progress via Twitter. That might be the best way to offer some help, links or tips as well by twittering @getcreativeweek.

Happy Independence Day to my readers in the US!

If you’re looking for independence, a new job (or a new skilled team member) might be the way to go (I know that’s kind of a lame transition).

It’s been a few months since I decided to work on a better solution than the Higher Ed Experts forum to help the community on the job front.

Well, today I’ve just had the time necessary to complete this project (weird what I would do when I procrastinate on my presentation and webinar scheduling duties ;-) and I need your help to get things started by posting your job ads or by pointing hiring managers in your institution to this new free resource available at www.higheredexperts.com/work.

Post a new job / higheredexperts.com/work

I hope you find this new FREE service helpful.

I’ll be sending an email to the +1,400 members of Higher Ed Experts next week to announce it, so your job postings will be seen by many qualified professionals working in higher education.

What I really love about this application is that you can actually subscribe to the new job postings via RSS.

This morning, I received two emails asking if it was still possible to register for the May 7 webinar about crisis/emergency websites presented by Mike Dame from Virginia Tech (the initial registration deadline was yesterday).

As a result, I decided to postpone the registration deadline until this Friday (May 2) at 9PM ET. If you want to learn more on why and how to design a crisis/emergency web template for your institution, this webinar will help.

Institutions registered for this series include:

• Alfred University
• Appalachian State University
• Augusta State University
• Cape Fear Community College
• Christopher Newport University
• Colorado State University
• Grant MacEwan College
• Hiram College
• Kettering University
• Lesley University
• Lynn University
• Michigan State University
• Plymouth State University
• St Norbert College
• State University of NY at New Paltz
• Texas Christian University
• Texas Tech University
• The University of Melbourne
• Univ of Tennessee Health Science Center
• University of Alaska Fairbanks
• University of Delaware
• University of Florida
• Upper Iowa University
• West Chester University

For more information and to register online, just go to www.higheredexperts.com/911website

And, if you have any problems or issues, just send me an email at karine@collegewebeditor.com

At Virginia Tech, Mike Dame and his team have been working on this day of remembrance on the Web for a while and the result is another beautiful piece of Web design on the homepage:

A dedicated website has also been created for the event at www.remembrance.vt.edu:

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This is how Virginia Tech remembers, how do you? Share with the rest of us by posting a comment.