Every college campus has access to shovels, soil, seeds, trimmers, yet why are some campuses stunning places of beauty for education while others…not so much? It isn’t the tools, it is an expression of values, leadership, and discipline that enable physical campus beauty over the decades. Shouldn't we do this in the digital environment? A CMS, a few web developers, and varied ideas don’t make digital beauty (or effectiveness). It's time to bring the discipline and lessons from physical beauty to the digital campus where students, parents, and faculty spend much of their college years.

2. Brian Hawkins
@iuxc
My background

4. Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
1949

5. Our hero is called to adventure

6. Goes from Mundane world to one of Adventure

7. Is given knowledge

8. Is tested and tempted

9. Confronts a nemesis

10. Journeys back to the old world, transformed by experience

11. This is the college experience!
NEXT: History of colleges

12. The 17-1800s were a period of tremendous growth in the US. Throughout that time, colleges were popping up all over the country! By 1880, Ohio had 37 colleges compared to 4 colleges
in all of England.
As America’s population grew, so did it’s number of colleges.

13. But they didn’t all survive.

14. 1861
1850
1840
Fifth US Census: Pop 17M
Colleges: >100
Sixth US Census: Pop 23M
Colleges: ~150
Seventh US Census: Pop 32M
Colleges: >200
Source: http://americanphilosophy.net/american_colleges.htm
Census numbers

15. 1861
Seventh US Census: Pop 32M
Colleges: >200
600+
Colleges had
FAILED
Source: http://americanphilosophy.net/american_colleges.htm
Over 600 colleges did not survive!
Thomas Gaines’ book tries to answer why.

16. “In their haste to open these new
schools, most administrations
forgot that a concern for aesthetic
vitality is crucial to developing any
cultural center.”
–Thomas A. Gaines

17. 4,599
Colleges &
Universities
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_the_United_States
There are over 4,500 colleges in the US!
How do students choose?
What is their first impression of our universities?

18. 60%
Visual
Environment
the Most
Important
Source: Carnegie Foundation
60% of college-bound students consider visual environment to be the most important factor in choosing their college.

19. The beauty of our campus, of course!
If I want to go to the University of Alaska, and I live in Indiana, how am I going to learn more?
Their website.

20. What the is this?!

22. What the is this?!

23. Our digital campus is becoming the
gateway to our physical campus.
Our digital campus is becoming the gateway to our physical.
Let’s take a quick tour.

24. This is UCLA. It’s a nice campus. This is Royce Hall.

25. This is Haines Hall.

26. This is the law school. They have a pretty campus.

27. This is Harvard. We can all imagine ourselves walking through this campus, and it would be much like this. Gorgeous.
What about their digital campus? What’s an important tool for all students? The LMS!

28. The Learning Management System
The learning management system. So what’s it like being a student at Harvard? Can I find my digital “classroom” as easily as my physical classrooms?

31. Nailed it! Now let’s look at UCLA.

33. WHAT IS
GOING ON?!

37. At least someone got this task right.

38. Digital strategy is no longer an option.
Relying on people to just “know” how to find something, or to google it is a bad strategy.

39. Over 60,000,000 page views.
Five major sites, since January.
What does our typical digital campus strategy look like?

40. Reasons we make websites:
1. Immediate need
2. Administration said to
3. Chance

41. This is bad. Very bad.

42. What would our physical campus look
like if we used our digital strategy?
What if we had the same strategy for our physical campus?

53. How did we get here?
Let’s start with org charts.

54. Arts & Letters
Dean
WEB! Faculty Staff

55. Business School
Dean
WEB! Faculty Staff

56. Music School
Dean
WEB! Faculty Staff

57. Biology Department
Dean
WEB! Faculty Staff

58. Chemistry Department
Dean
WEB! Faculty Staff

59. German Department
Dean
WEB! Faculty Staff

60. Libraries
Dean
WEB! Faculty Staff

61. Academic Advising
Director
WEB! Advisor Advisor

62. Information Technology
Director
WEB! Staff Staff

63. Athletics
Director
WEB! Staff Staff

64. Office of the President
President
WEB! VPs Staff

65. Office of the Provost
Provost
WEB! Staff Staff

66. Architect’s Office
Director
WEB! Staff Staff

67. A bunch of spread out developers does
not a cohesive strategy make.
What did we expect to happen?

68. When we’re playing Choose Your Own Adventure with our digital campus, we are:
1.) Costing our universities money
2.) Negatively impacting our students’ ability to succeed

69. What if the departments that worked in our buildings were able to decide how to design those buildings?
We need to be fun! We can’t do this in the physical campus, but we can and are doing it in on our digital campus.

70. SAFETY: Point out fire hydrant.
We can’t solve them here today. I don’t have a solution for you. I’m just here to draw attention to the problem, and to the need to come together as a group and as individual campuses to
figure a way out.

71. SPREADING OUT
WEB TALENT
We need to STOP spreading our web developers out across campus and departments.
We’re looking at each site as it’s own entity. As a singular site that is loosely, if at all, connected to the schools, sites, and departments around it.

72. Over 60,000,000 page views.
This is no longer an option. We are now managing two campuses: The digital and the physical.

73. We are now managing two campuses:
Digital and Physical
This is no longer an option. We are now managing two campuses: The digital and the physical.

74. We are looking through the wrong end of the looking glass.

75. Let’s aspire to digital campus beauty that matches our physical campus.

76. Brian Hawkins
@iuxc