COE web administrators refer to the website as a communications product. What does this mean?
The website is similar to the Academic Programs brochure, another communications product of the College of Education. Academic program faculty and the associate dean for academic programs describe requirements, degrees, and majors available; College of Education Marketing and Graphic Design Coordinator Kathleen Heinz selects photography, edits text to create continuity, and designs the format for the Academic Programs brochure.
In the case of the COE website, academic program faculty and the associate dean for academic programs also have written descriptions of program requirements, degrees, and majors available, and other aspects necessary to communicate to students applying to programs. In most cases, the original draft of the website was produced by the communications team, using print documents or existing web documents or direct copy provided by faculty. In order to capture accurate materials, this initial draft was created to provide a direct, visual system of shared editing. In contrast to printed documents, the evolution of the "publication" may take place online: instead of circulating proofs, offices view and share editing functions simultaneously.
Who decides what goes on the website?
The website content management is a shared task.
The home, resource paths, user paths, and program overview pages are administered by the COE communications team. The team selects photography and stories, creates paths, removes links, and creates additional content, with direction from the dean, associate dean for academic programs, and associate dean for research and outreach. Faculty and staff also provide feedback about possible content features or communications needs of students. The Student Advisory Board and academic secretaries provide first-hand user reports on issues and needs of student web users.
The program overviews—the program pages first displayed for each academic program—are created with text and concepts provided by program faculty. The design fits a strict format, such that the conventions of the COE website dictate link placement, types of headers, visuals, and other design elements. The oversight of this page is shared because a program may wish to change text or create new links, while the content and format is administered by the communications team.
The academic program information is more directly administered by academic program web editors. These are degree program profiles, with headings and features already determined by design in a template the programs' web editors are trained to fill and update.
So programs can put up whatever they want, if they have a web editor trained in the Cold Fusion application?
Programs may create new content and new links of infinite number. Use of the College of Education web publishing tool dictates adherence to the graphic and communications standards detailed in the COE Website Graphic Standards manual. Academic program web editors publish according to standards, and the communications team oversees those new sections of the web publication, so that they represent the College of Education's organizational identity in a coherent manner.
But what if we want to be more creative?
The sky is truly the limit in web design. At the UO, we are fortunate to have resources available to faculty and staff who want to learn to edit html or to design pages, and we are provided server space to deploy web pages. If a program or staff person undertakes a creative web display, programs may post to another server such as darkwing, and links to items appropriate to academic programs may be added to COE pages.
May programs or areas create their own representations or "Home" Web pages on other servers to describe their programs?
Yes. There is no limitation on programs or faculty who desire to create appropriate communications materials. The Internet locations for program information are available on darkwing or interact.
Home pages currently in use are SPSY, and EINT. These program pages co-exist with and are linked to COE descriptions of the same programs on education.uoregon.edu. COE program descriptions include links to “SPSY HOME”, for instance. Independent home pages for the programs should include a link to the COE home page.
If these home pages exist on other servers, why was there a need to create a new site?
The need for a new site was prompted by a statewide study of stakeholder partners, students, and the licensing bodies in the OUS system. An O-QAT 2000 survey of state institutions with websites serving students ranked the UO College of Education interact site as the last-place website serving Education students in the state. Described as incoherent, confusing to student users, and below accessibility standards, the former COE interact website was deemed inadequate because it provided no guidance to users and little relevance to student audiences. The criteria identified for more effective websites in this report led to framing questions for the initial focus groups with faculty, staff, and students to address usability and technical needs for updating and maintaining material. These criteria also guided the writing of the RFP and bid process in interviewing and selecting programming firms to build the new website. (See History of COE Website Development.)
Are there any difficulties involved in the creation of a HOME page in addition to their current COE program description?
The first concern of a webpage designed to deploy student information is accessibility. Designers will want to comply with accessibility standards for browser readers such as the standards provided by Bobby or other published reviews.
Another key consideration is one of capacity for maintenance and timely updating: COE's website is jointly administered by programs and the college, and requires no technical expertise in rendering program information to electronic distribution. Where programs have not been able to create their own materials, Dean’s Office staff have collaborated to create and maintain a coherent college-wide academic program description. Those programs wishing to update or maintain their materials independently have personnel who trained in the data entry system and are editing materials independently.
Web pages created by faculty or personnel with technical skills may be posted to the Internet on UO servers. Designating personnel to update or maintain information, to oversee accessibility standards, and adhere to the graphic identity stipulations of the University of Oregon is recommended.
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