August 2023 Website Meeting

Notes

“Community & Global Engagement” landing page update

During our last meeting, we discussed updates about the new “Community & Global Engagement” landing page and how the progress on developing that page was coming along. Since then, Jason has begun implementing the page in Umbraco and should have something near complete by next week. Shawn said with that, he’s looking to have that new page design launched around September 6 or 13.

For context about the motivations for redesigning this landing page, Shawn pointed out that Nursing is one of the Health Sciences schools that is very active within the community. Our goal with this new design was to try and surface more of those community-focused initiatives the school undertakes. The Faith Community Nursing program is a key driver in the school’s community-led initiatives, and this design will hopefully put this front-and-center. But Wendy felt it was important to have a home for this and professional development services to showcase the school’s land grant initiatives.

As for next steps, once Jason gets everything ready to go in Umbraco, Wendy will have an opportunity to review the page design and make any necessary content changes. She will also want to get feedback from others at the school. Nathan also mentioned that we would need to get this page’s design in front of the ITS Change Advisory Board for approval once it’s ready to go live.

Tuition updates and changes

With the new school year, the web team has begun the process of importing and updating tuition information for the Health Sciences schools. That process is on-going, and the web team will keep Wendy and the school updated on that process. Along with that, the team has been designing and developing some additions to the school-level tuition page, as well as designing a new program-level page. That new page type will just single-out tuition figures that are relevant to a specific program, along with other details like estimated additional costs associated with being enrolled in the program. Wendy and the school will also have the option to display more culturally-focused content, such as student testimonials and Diversity-related content on these pages.

Wendy pointed out that the school has a page for the scholarships that would apply to their students on their site already. She also requested that for the testimonial blocks on these pages, if they could be made so that the pull quote that is used is different than what is displayed on the student’s profile. More times than not, the quotes on a student’s profile don’t deal with anything related to tuition or financial aid. She suggested this could be an additional field on the profile itself that only is displayed in these circumstances. The web team will work on a solution for doing that. Also, the profile/testimonial block will be made optional on these pages, especially the program-level tuition pages. That way, Wendy doesn’t have to ensure that each program is represented by at least one student profile. Although, it seems as though Wendy has that covered already, as all of the school’s programs seem to be represented by at least one profile.

Wendy also asked again about the school’s online programs, and how they can be represented in the tuition information. Shawn thinks this is do-able and said we can begin to have those conversations and to make plans to incorporate that data. Shawn mentioned that he knows there was an effort to make the tuition for online programs consistent with the more traditional in-person programs, but he is unsure of where that process stands now. Wendy said that she would be fine with just linking out to the WVU Online website for those programs, if nothing else.

Wendy said she will share the tuition page and the plans with Phillip, and possibly Caitlin Delligatti of their Office of Student Services, for their feedback.

“Welcome Week” page

Welcome Week—much to everyone’s surprise—has snuck up on us once again. With that in mind, Shawn wanted to direct our attention to the school’s “Welcome Week” page to evaluate if any content needed to be reviewed or updated. He also informed the group that the web team will be working to add some additional information to the page around student health and well-being.

Wendy mentioned that she has a feature for the home page already that focuses on incoming students, though it currently links out to the university’s “Welcome Week” website. Once the school’s page is updated with the health and wellness information, those references on the home page feature could be adjusted to point to the school-level page, which in turn has links out to the university-level site.

Additional home page features and advertising

In addition to the feature focused on Welcome Week, Wendy has also created or is in the process of making some additional features that will be in rotation on the home page. She currently has a feature published that highlights the school’s participation in the Boy Scouts Jamboree. Also, it was recently announced that the school’s Keyser campus achieved a 100% pass rate on the NCLEX. Wendy is currently working on getting that feature ready to display on the site.

Wendy has also been working on some advertising for the school by setting up a Google Ads campaign. She says the package might also result in ads appearing on YouTube. She says this is her first time using the Google Ads platform. Apparently, Google is using A.I. in the process, providing suggestions for images and copy to include in the ads. She says the ads should begin running in the next few weeks.

Social media strategies

Shawn was curious if Wendy had any thoughts on creating a Threads account, which is the new social media site from Instagram/Meta. Wendy says that she will defer that kind of decision-making to Tyler, the campus’s social media strategist.

She also mentioned that the school has lost a lot of followers on what was once known as Twitter, and what is now referred to as X. She mentions the social media tool that the university uses no longer allows her to react to posts on that site anymore, but that she can still schedule posts there.

New office: Continuing Professional Development

Wendy noted that the school is creating a new office: Continuing Professional Development. Right now, the school is working on the logistics of this new office, but the goal of this new entity is to make sure continuing education classes are offered to as many people through the state and beyond. These classes are going to be a mixture of free and paid.

Wendy has been in contact with both Bill and Jason already about coming up with some plans for how to promote this new office and its endeavors on the website. The school currently does have a page devoted to continuing education classes, and that page could be modified to better showcase the additional information that would come out of this new office.

Wendy has been wondering, since some of the classes will be evergreen while others temporarily offered, if there could be a way that these classes could be connected with the forthcoming Events module, which is still in development and hasn’t yet been rolled out to the Nursing website. Shawn believes this is possible. He also mentioned that the School of Public Health explored a similar strategy to this a few years ago.