June 2020 Website Meeting

Notes

This meeting was conducted remotely via a group Zoom call.

AUPHA membership widget

Early last week, Nikky had asked about adding images to the program pages on the Public Health website, specifically for the purposes of indicating that programs are now affiliated with the Association for University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA). Instead of simply allowing images on these pages, which is not something we typically design for on school sites, the web team proposed instead allowing for a specific widget to be toggled on for the appropriate programs. Text for the widget would be defined in a property on the “Students” page level, keeping it in a central location so that any future updates to the text don’t need to be made in multiple places.

The update to the pages was made, and Nikky kicked off the meeting by informing the group she had toggled on the widget for the Bachelor of Science in Health Services Management and Leadership and the Master of Health Administration pages.

Summer tasks

Discussion then changed focus to tasks that should be addressed over the summer months. Beyond doing general content reviews for the entire site, Dave suggested keeping the Students page updated, and incorporating details about the return to campus plans where applicable. It may be worth highlighting the changes in academic programs as it relates to the hybrid model of both in-class and remote coursework.

Roles of Covid-19 pieces

Nikky asked about the plan for the coronavirus banner present on almost all university websites, as well as the school-specific coronavirus pages, the separate university “Coronavirus” website, and the new “Return to Campus” website.

Dan said that as far as the banner goes, we’ll continue to mirror what the university decides to do with it and for as long as it’s present on the other university sites. Schools are being encouraged to continue contributing as much content as they see fit to the school-specific pages. There has been discussions about archiving information that is no longer as relevant as it was when originally posted, like things specific to the spring semester. A solution for this may be coming in the near future. As for the university’s “Coronavirus” site, this will primarily be a health-specific site going forward, detailing specific medical-related information about the disease as it is applicable to the university community. The “Return to Campus” site should be seen as an action plan for what the university plans to do operation-wise for the fall semester and beyond.

Google Analytics and user research

Nikky brought up Google Analytics once again, continuing our discussion that started a few months before we all left campus. She wanted to know if creating an at-a-glance analytics report is still feasable, which it certainly is. Dave suggested that we look to have something for this by the next monthly meeting, and that maybe we could begin by looking at things like the search terms being collected by the analytics. Often, queries—both getting users to the site and those made while on the site—indicate types of content that don’t exist or are too difficult to locate on a site. Outside of that, the school should think about and try to come up with things that they would want to know about that the analytics could help answer. This is a much more efficient way to evaluate the data than simply browsing an endless sea of stats.

We also discussed what possibilities there are for doing more user research. Dave mentioned that there were plans made to figure out how students find out about things related to the school. With the on-going pandemic, this is much more difficult to do. Nikky mentioned that the Davis College were able to do some research, not only looking at accepted students but also those who didn’t end up at WVU.

Both Dave and Dan thought that Public Health would be an ideal school to try and do more of this kind of research. A good start might be to plan to survey the incoming freshman class and some of the recent graduates of the school. It was also mentioned that the school invites students to complete an exit survey. It would be interesting to compare the results of that survey against some of the site analytics to see if that gives us some conclusions that could be acted on.

Ruby, and bonsai trees

It was about this point in the meeting we were introduced to Nikky’s kitty, Ruby. Dave also shared with us his zen area of his desk, including a bonsai tree and a starter kit he bought online.

Internal resources

Nikky and Jessica had some questions about posting resources that are more focused on faculty and staff. Jason suggested the ideal place for this would probably be on the Public Health page of the Employee Hub. (The school had linked to some standard operating guidelines on there previously.) Jessica drafted a questionnaire and was wondering the best route to getting this and other forms online, whether that be through Qualtrics, Wufoo, or some other tool. Any of these tools would work; however, if the goal is to embed the forms on a webpage, the sites are configured with tools that work best with Wufoo.

The process for creating a Wufoo form was discussed as well: once the questions for the form or survey have been drafted, they can be sent along to our support team, who then creates the form. The school is then able to embed them on their webpage via the Wufoo form macro.

Additional project updates

Nikky asked if there was any updates on tuition information being put on the school websites, but there really isn’t. That project is currently on hold. The web team will communicate any updates on this project as they become available.

Nikky also mentioned the two sub-sites that have been in the works and should be near completion: PRC and the OHSR Data Dictionary. She is going to follow-up with these groups to see if any progress has been made.