February 2023 Website Meeting

Notes

Upcoming programmatic changes

Nikky started us off by informing the group that she had been part of a meeting the prior day that was about upcoming changes to the school’s programs, specifically around creating a new bachelors to masters program. This new program would be largely targeted at an internal audience (current students).

Accreditation details and displaying data tables

The week prior to our meeting, Nikky had contacted the web team via Slack concerning some information she needed to have displayed on one of school’s program pages in order to comply with accreditation requirements. The Master of Science in Industrial Hygiene program was inherited from Statler College, and the accrediting body for the program requires past enrollment data for the program to be present on the school’s website.

The enrollment data had been presented in the past in a table graphic, and Nikky was hoping that she would be able to reproduce that table on the program page using Umbraco. However, the web team does not allow for data tables to be created and added to content pages in Umbraco directly. These types of tables are often very difficult to create in content management systems (CMSs) like Umbraco, and can lead to errors in displaying the data and accessibility violations. On Slack, Dan had suggested—as a quick and possibly temporary solution—trying to reformat the data using the tools available in Umbraco, namely using a combination of headings and bulleted lists, which is what Nikky was able to do. She reported that the accreditors were going to look at the site the Monday prior to our meeting for compliance on this.

Since then, the web team took up a discussion about adding the ability to include simple data tables like this on content pages. The team brainstormed a few possible solutions, which they will develop and test out, and then when a possible solution has been created they will share that with the group for feedback.

Potential upcoming projects

Nikky then wanted to discuss with us some things that she wanted to be on the group’s radar for more time-sensitive initiatives that may need tackled on the website.

National Public Health Week

The first of these topics was this year’s edition of National Public Health Week (NPHW). Nikky was involved in a meeting earlier in the week in which plans for this event were discussed.

Nikky assumed and proposed using the new Events module for this purpose, though she wasn’t quite clear on how it should be determined when the Events module should be seen as the appropriate solution. Is the litmus test for Events based on the number of things happening as part of the event, or is it more based on how prominent the event information needs to be? Shawn responded that the aim with events is this: WVU Calendar exists and we should use it regardless. However, options for WVU Calendar are limited, and when more robust content around a particular event exists, then the new Events system is available as a solution. Events allows us to market these in a more direct way, and have a greater control over what details we want to present and how that manifests itself on our sites.

As far as what’s to expect for NPHW, Nikky believes there will be a career fair and some kind of gratitude event for various partner organizations of the school which will likely involve a variety of guest speakers. She believes we could probably model some of the details off of what we did for the 10-year school anniversary celebration from last year.

Finally, Nikky wondered if she was okay to begin entering information about NPHW into the Events system. Shawn thought so.

Health communication projects and competition

Last week, Nikky had a meeting with Elizabeth Claydon, who teaches what is effectively a health communications course. In the course, students complete projects each semester that are “fake” but produce real assets surrounding health communication. Nikky has been thinking of ways to utilize those projects and leverage them to be used as content for the website and social media postings that can demonstrate what students can produce when they are enrolled in such a program. She also is in the process of developing a competition for these students and their projects. The projects themselves can range from printed pieces or videos addressing health topics. As part of the competition, she would expect something along the lines of 5–8 submissions, and she’s thinking that the submissions process could be done through either a Qualtrics or Wufoo form. Then, a jury formed of other communicators or members of the community would judge the submissions.

One concern, though, is how a process would need to be established to handle submissions of video projects. This is not something that Qualtrics or Wufoo are necessarily built to handle. Shawn mentioned the caveat with videos is their file size. It’s not realistic to expect Wufoo or Qualtrics to accept files that large. One route is to simply have the competitors upload the projects to YouTube, but that would mean requiring a student to sign up for an account. Alternatively, and even though this is not something that the university may like, the students could upload their project to a shared folder in a service like Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive. The process would probably require a participant submitting things in two steps for a video project: first, the basic details of the project would be submitted via the web form. Then, someone would later supply the participant with a private link to the shared directory. Finally, the participant would use that link to upload their project. Since students’ MIX accounts are Google-based, a Google Drive solution might be the more ideal option.

The timeline for this looks like a solution would need to be in place by April.

Well-being site

For our next topic, Shawn brought up a new page that has been designed for the Well-Being website. The goal of this new page is to serve as a list for all of the physical and mental health resources available to anyone on campus. This page has a search functionality and filters people can use to narrow-down the resources to match what is needed. Additional filtering options are in the works, including a way to indicate who the user is and more about what they are looking for.

The university builds websites for these types of resources all the time. So many resources (BeWell, Carruth, Well-Being, etc.) already exist and new initiatives seem to be popping up left and right. However, there hasn’t been a lot of clarity on what each resource aims to achieve or how a similar resource might better serve a person seeking help. This page is intended to help with that, and the web team’s idea is that when this list of resources is as close to as robust as possible, we want to pivot the subfooter on our schools’ sites to feature this list in some way. (In addition, Shawn has intentions of getting this list to appear prominently within SOLE.) Future plans for this resource include expanding it out to not only be a resource for the Health Sciences campus, but to promote it as a resource for the university-wide community. Additionally, as this continues to develop and as part of a “Phase 3” for this project, Shawn would like to create school-specific services and resources lists, for items that only apply or affect a certain school.

New student organization

Finally, Nikky wanted to give the group a heads-up about a new student organization that is being created from the Master of Health Administration program.