Improving University Websites Information Architecture & Scientific Visibility
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The document provides guidance on improving the information architecture and scientific visibility of university websites by outlining key questions to consider regarding goals, audiences, and analysis, recommending benchmarking other top university sites, and emphasizing the importance of interaction design, open access initiatives, and social media to increase a university's scientific reputation and visibility.
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Improving University Websites Information Architecture & Scientific Visibility
- 1. Improving Web Information Architecture & International Scientific Visibility University / Higher Education Websites:
- 2. CONTENTS 1. Questions you may ask yourself 2. Information Architecture 3. Interaction Design 4. Scientific Visibility 5. Conclusions
- 3. 1. Questions you may ask yourself
- 4. QUESTIONS YOU MAY ASK YOURSELF • Your Goals • Your Challenges • Your Target Audiences • Your Analyses
- 5. STRATEGIC GOALS • Reach more scientific international visibility? • Obtain international agreements/ collaboration with reputed universities? • Improve position on rankings (ARWU, THE, Webometrics…)? • Enhance Intranet Knowledge Management? • Optimize CRM performance? • … ?
- 6. TACTICAL GOALS • More international students? • More (and better) postgraduate students? • Contract Highly Cited international Staff? • Explore e-learning advantages? • Companies agreements on R&D? • … ?
- 7. YOUR GOALS What do you want from your website? Example: • More international students
- 8. YOUR GOALS Web importance is growing as a source of information for international students: • 61% students said that the university’s website was very important when they made their choice (website answers) • 52% said that the opinion of someone who had been at this university was very important (alumni) • brochures (10%) • exhibitions (8%) (Lund University 2008- Sweden)
- 9. YOUR GOALS So, when focusing on new students, ask yourself: “Why did students choose my university?” Gerry McGovern Carewords Total % Cumu % of Prestigious, well- recognized degree 187 7% 7 Future job prospects 137 5% 12 Top quality professors/lecturers 107 4% 16 Career advice 106 4% 19 Top ranking university 101 4% 23 Top ranking course 101 4% 27 Social life 99 4% 30 Nightlife 89 3% 33 Fees 87 3% 37 Postgraduate 80 3% 39 Student-focused 79 3% 42 Course materials 77 3% 45 Societies and clubs 73 3% 48 Faculties 71 3% 50
- 10. YOUR CHALLENGES • Budget • Bias (english dominance) • Internationalization & Globalization • Reputation & Credibility • How the university is perceived • Get them to where we want
- 11. YOUR TARGET AUDIENCES • Prospective students • Parents & Careers Advisers • National and international researchers • Potential customers • The Media & Community • Current students • Staff • Alumni • Public Bodies & Government
- 12. ABOUT TARGET AUDIENCES • Every potential user group look for different information • Same content has different importance for different groups • Prioritize contents prominance. How? • Power law: within target groups / audience segments / cohorts, – a few info is searched by many, – most of info searched by a few.
- 14. ANALYSIS - ELEMENTS Peter Morville
- 15. ANALYSIS - PROCESS Evaluation & Iteration Questionnaires KPI metricsTests & Prototyping FEEDBACK Information Audit
- 16. ANALYSIS – WHAT? University goals and objectives Competitive analysis Tasks Analysis Audiences Analysis User needs analysis
- 17. ANALYSIS – HOW? • End user focus groups • Card sorting • Search Analytics • Web Analytics • Online/E-mail questionnaire • User prototypes testing • Webmaster emails from users requests • Etc.
- 18. ANALYSIS – HOW? When measuring: • Define who your users are (segmentation) • Know what your users do on your site • Understand your users motivations • Don´t measure to meet your expectations • Look for patterns • Find causal relations
- 19. ANALYSIS - EXAMPLES Number of prospectus queries per day: (Manchester Metropolitan University)
- 20. ANALYSIS - EXAMPLES Number of prospectus queries per day: business 10,098 law 9,512 psychology 7,210 fashion 5,660 physiotherapy 4,297 marketing 4,159 teaching 4,141 education 3,903 english 3,789 (Manchester Metropolitan University)
- 22. INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Change Management Support Process design Checklists Vision Content “Supply” Flow Performance Mgmt Benchmarking data Communications Template messages Presentations Publications Newsletters/Bulletins Conferences Demonstrations “Success Stories” FAQ Training Classroom study Workshops Distance Learning Self Video/Audio Train the trainers On-line job aids Faculty/Area Based “Leadership kits” Incentives + Rewards Programs Promotion Events Frequent User Program Academy Awards Contests Incentive Programs Career Plan usaid.gov
- 23. PUBLISH THINK 4 Subject Matter ExpertContent 2 CMS Content Manager Content 1 Content 3 Functional KM Team 1 2 GENERATE 3 PREPARE
- 24. INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Whitworth et al. privacy extendibility security connectivity reliability functionality flexibilityusability privacy extendibility security connectivity reliability functionality flexibilityusability “balanced” “favouring security, reliability & privacy”
- 25. INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE • Functional structure, not organizational • The web team/committee is not the audience • User always should know: – where is, – where has been, – where is he going
- 26. INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Let´s do some benchmarking: • Home page main structures of… • Five of the better positioned universities in… • Webometrics.info worldwide ranking • Looking for matching points, patterns…
- 27. INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE University portals analyzed: - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Harvard University - Stanford University - University of California Berkeley - Pennsylvania State University
- 28. According to these Websites, we can recognize a number of common sections in large part. Identifying them with color labels it is possible to observe content related with international and promotional aspects.
- 30. MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 31. MIT
- 32. MIT - Main Link Contents Analysis
- 35. Harvard – Main Link Contents Analysis
- 38. Stanford – Main Link Contents Analysis
- 39. Berkeley – University of California
- 41. Berkeley - Main Link Contents Analysis
- 44. Pennsylvania - Main Direct Links and Contents
- 46. INTERACTION DESIGN • Identify tasks • Order by user priorities • Order user priorities by university goals • Create workflow to get the task done • Test it & Iterate • Measure after publishing • Redesign if necessary
- 48. INTERACTION DESIGN An example of best practice: Situation: English speaker graduate interested on studying a PHD in Netherlands, in Utrech University.
- 49. 1. Enter in www.uu.nl/
- 50. 1. Enter in www.uu.nl/ Website is in English. To change to NATIVE language, you have to choose the option.
- 51. 2. Look for PhD studies
- 52. 3. Look for PhD studies
- 53. 3. Look for PhD studies International Students MicroSite Specific and Useful Information
- 54. 3. Look for PhD studies
- 55. 4. HERE WE ARE!
- 56. 4. HERE WE ARE! Complete info about how to obtain PhD Direct access to main contents
- 57. 4. HERE WE ARE! And we also have all information for IS visible.
- 59. SCIENTIFIC VISIBILITY • To have a better portal is the beginning, not the end of story • A better portal is not enough • Reputation & Credibility comes from every researcher´s reputation • Don´t wait the –research- world come to you • The more links –visibility- to you, the more probability of visits and goals –tasks- completed. • Your university research need –always- more visibility
- 61. SCIENTIFIC VISIBILITY • The more visibility, the more citations • Visibility is for: – best authors who produce… – best papers, published in… – best “places” (journals, databases, internet…) to be found in… – more visible places, which are… – those with more connections
- 64. SCIENTIFIC VISIBILITY It is needed to enhance research visibility. How? Outside your institution: • Look for the best researchers (local, national, international) • Attract international collaboration with better researchers than yourself
- 65. SCIENTIFIC VISIBILITY It is needed to enhance research visibility. How? Inside your institution: • Ensure control of your researchers publications • Measure, Compare and Evaluate • Give tools to reach more audience quickly. • The more audience, the more probability of citation
- 66. SCIENTIFIC VISIBILITY Control, measure and evaluation of researchers publications to: • Audit internal researchers publications quality • Understand your institution research fronts • Compare them internally and with others • Set personal and collective strategies • Improve scientific motivation
- 67. SCIENTIFIC VISIBILITY Example: Cites per document (you against…) Source: Scimago (Scopus)
- 68. SCIENTIFIC VISIBILITY It is needed to enhance research visibility. How? • Give researchers tools to reach more audience quickly. • The more audience, the more probability of citation How?
- 69. SCIENTIFIC VISIBILITY • Publish in better impact factor Journals • Publish in OAI (Open Access Initiative) journals • Upload preprints, etc., to OAI repositories • Think on Scholar SEO (Search Engine Optimization) at paper level. • Work around general and specialized social networks • Connect all actions (offline and online)
- 70. 5. CONCLUSIONS
- 71. CONCLUSIONS • Set your strategic goals • Audit (diagnostics) first • Segment your audience • Analyze, measure, evaluate KPIs and production • Make it a commitment all organization members (KM) • Ensure everybody helps (Change management) • Organize contents by tasks, not by organizational chart. • The portal is not an island (visibility) • Give tools to your people & researchers • Think OAI / Scholar SEO & Social Media