In this 4-question interview, Cade tells us about the best website advice ever, the most challenging part of the job of a higher ed web pro, a great web tool and shares a top 3 of favorite higher ed websites.
1) What is the best advice you’ve ever been given about higher ed websites?
The best advice I’ve been given was that monitoring all of our competitor higher ed websites will only prepare us to be decent followers, rather than leaders or innovators.
To encourage innovation and leadership in the higher education space, we need to be looking broadly across all types of websites, and identifying great ideas outside of our “own backyard.” With that in mind, within our team, we regularly showcase the best ideas we’ve seen around the web. I also actively encourage the team to not be content with making our site as good as “University X” but instead focussing on fulfilling our user and business needs the best we possibly can.
2) How do you cope with the most challenging part of your job?
The most challenging part of my job is managing and leading people well in an environment that is very susceptible to change, with circumstances often out of our control.
Strategic and operational priorities feel like they shift regularly, budgets are never sufficient to accommodate the number of people we need to get the job(s) done well, and people quite naturally have their own best interests in mind – even if they don’t always directly match the University’s. So, I have to work hard with our team to define the areas we can control. What are the projects that we are responsible for delivering? What service levels and standards do we need to maintain? I work hard to build a shared sense of identity and purpose for our team. As part of building a healthy team, it is helpful to acknowledge what we can’t control, what we can influence collectively and how we can support each other. Our daily stand-up meeting is the practical way we do it. It’s a place to share key wins from the previous day, top issues or updates for the day ahead as well as a brief “show and tell” of something a team member has been working on or seen on the Web.
3) What is your favorite tool?
Scrumdo is a tool we use to support our relatively agile project management methodology.
We use this tool to plan our project sprints, store project artifacts and deliverables, and monitor task allocation and deadlines. It’s very well suited to agile project management, but is also flexible enough that it can be customized on a project basis to support waterfall workflow, general task management or even a personal todo list.
4) What are your top 3 favorite higher ed websites?
- Charles Sturt University’s Future Student Course Finder
This is a recently redeveloped site that the CSU Web Office has produced. It is the result of a close partnership with our Division of Marketing and Communication. It meets all the key business specifications and is the result of extensive user research and testing. It has been carefully and expertly built in our enterprise CMS, and also just looks and functions great.
- Open Universities Australia’s Course “Wizard”
I like the way it leads users through a series of questions to choose the best course for them. I’m not sure that the process adds a lot of value to the end selection of courses, but it gives the user the impression of a highly tailored experience.
- Deakin University
I like their consistency of user interface through the top level of the site, the emphasis on search, the expansive main menu on the left, and the overall tidy design and consistent brand experience.
A conference focusing on higher ed WEBSITES?
The 2018 Higher Ed WEBSITES Conference (now available on-demand!) is a must for higher ed web professionals and teams looking for inspiration, ideas and best practices to kick off their summer projects.
Read below what a few of your higher ed colleagues who attended the 1st edition of the Higher Ed WEBSITES Conference say about the experience.