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Student Counselling Services Websites
Hanno
Koppel
Counselor
Cardiff University
Posted November 6,
2001 Student
Affairs Online, 2 (Fall)
This article is a personal view of the virtues of a student
counselling service website, written from the perspective of someone
who has been in the enviable position (I jest) of having to construct
a website for a student counselling service of a large university. I
will concentrate on the purposes behind establishing an Internet
presence for a counseling office.
I work for the Student Counselling Service of Cardiff University.
Cardiff is one of Britain's major civic universities. In the most
recent independent assessment of the quality of research in
universities, Cardiff was ranked 15th out of more than 100 British
universities.
Cardiff has 23 departments and schools, incorporating a wide range
of subject areas: Business Studies and Law; Engineering and
Environmental Design; Health and Life Sciences; Humanities and Social
Studies and Physical Sciences. There are more than 15 000
undergraduate and postgraduate students drawn from throughout Wales,
the rest of the UK and from overseas. The whole University
has presence of the Net and it was not expected that the Student
Counselling Service (SCS from hereon in) should be an
exception
The significant tasks that faced me in composing our website were
easy to define but more difficult to address. The first was, why have
a presence on the Internet at all? The second was (assuming it is
agreed that a web page should be constructed), who are the audiences
for this information? The third question was, how are those audiences
going to benefit from the information posted, and what are the
benefits and possible pitfalls of having information on public
display?
The first question was, for me, an easy one to deal with. If an
institution establishes a web presence, it follows that all the
constituent departments or divisions of that institution must follow
suit. One would not wish for an individual or a group to be
conspicuous by their absence. However, it is possible to establish a
presence in a fairly passive, or minimalist, sense. For example, the
SCS could appear on the University site as a single page, maybe with
the phone number, an email address and opening times. This would be
simple, quick, easy and informative, and, as a task for me, eminently
time-efficient. So, I felt obligated to make the SCS appear on the
Web in some form, in order to conform to Cardiff University's
policies. This does not help you, gentle reader, if you have the
choice. However, it may help you to decide to write your web pages if
you think further, as I had to do, about the potential audiences and
the ways they might benefit from your efforts.
The main audience that I composed the SCS site for was the
students at Cardiff University. However, students - even in the UK -
are not the homogeneous population of popular belief. Students come
in a wide range of ages, backgrounds, ethnic origins and religious
and cultural beliefs.
This brings up the very first issue to be considered, when writing
a text. Serious consideration has to be given to the style, the tone
of the text. Because of the heterogeneity of the student population,
in writing for it the author should keep in mind what the whole range
of readers may, and may not, understand. I found that even simple
statements might be confusing to an overseas student who is not yet
very proficient in English. However, avoiding the rock of complexity
risks the author fetching up against the hard place of condescension.
Speaking entirely for myself, I know that, as a therapist, I can hear
myself patronise a student in a counselling session. However, I can
stop myself, apologise to the student and start again. In a written
text, there is no similar chance afforded to someone who has turned
off his or her readers. I can offer no one-size-fits-all solutions
here, except to say that it may be useful to keep in mind the tension
between talking-down-to simplicity as opposed to impenetrable
sophistication.
However, with the Web there is a third way. That is, one can write
at more than one level, simultaneously. Using hypertext, and the
phrase, "to find out more" (or its equivalent) one can place a
general piece of information in the forefront, while giving the more
sophisticated reader the chance to jump to some writing that is
appropriate to their level of understanding. This includes links to
other, specialist sites, as well as links within one's own site.
A related issue is something brought to my attention by a student
I was seeing for counselling. When I mentioned the SCS website as a
source for some information he might find helpful, he remarked that
he was reluctant to use our website. This was because he only had
access to computers in public places, and he did not feel comfortable
looking at material that passers-by could see him studying. He did
not like the idea that, sitting in the library, his friends and
colleagues might notice that he was reading about, say, suicide or
self-harm. This made me realise that the convention for producing
sites with a high impact is not necessarily appropriate for
counselling pages. Here the Web has a huge advantage over other
information-disseminating media.
The third question is how are those audiences going to benefit
from the information posted, and what are the benefits and possible
pitfalls of having information on public display? It is important to
avoid self-indulgence or narcissism. What do we have to offer that is
more meaningful than self-aggrandising home pages? To answer that
question I shall use the Cardiff
University Student Counselling Service Website as an example.
One feature of a counselling service website that may be very
useful, is the possibility of dispelling myths. In the UK at least,
most students have not experienced counselling prior to coming to
university. So, they may come to counselling burdened with all kinds
of misconceptions about what is on offer. By use of a common Web
convention - the FAQs (frequently asked questions) - many of the
general and specific misunderstandings may be addressed. In no other
way can the curious and concerned get the kind of reassurance that
can be placed on the Web. Hyperlink jumps allow a worried or puzzled
student to focus on their specific concern, without any distraction
from extraneous material.
These arguments apply equally to the self-help material. By using
links, the level of detail can be built progressively. One huge flaw
in printed self-help information is that it cannot be all things to
all people. A comprehensive leaflet on self-harm may contain
information on cosmetic surgery options that a self-harmer might be
very grateful to have. However, that same information might be
profoundly distressing to a person whose self-harm is not at that
level. The progressive display of material allows every reader access
to information pitched to their specific and individual
requirements.
Inserting links into your Web Pages saves you such a lot of time
and energy. It also avoids any risk of breaching copyright. Most
important it puts your readers in contact with material from the
source. For example, having been asked by students for information
about clinical issues that were outside my professional competence to
give, I put a link from our Website to the NHS Direct Website. Here
there is a lot of information on dozens of clinical conditions. Much
of this material is available in Urdu, Gujarati and other languages.
Best of all, a lot of explanations are in audio form, recordings that
were made for the NHS helpline. Another link that I put in was to the
Royal College of Psychiatrists. Here there are a series of electronic
leaflets on common psychiatric conditions. They are of a quality, and
carry an authority, I could not possibly afford, or hope to imitate.
This is the kind of material that I can set in front of interested
clients that I could not possibly do any other way.
There are two issues that arise from the self-help material on the
Web. It is not any more than information. It is not, for example,
electronic counselling. Computer programmes that respond in
pseudo-counsellor fashion do exist; a famous example is Eliza.
The other issue is that some counsellors have expressed concerns
that users of information can be detected and targeted in some way.
Innocent but irritating is the way that an electronic "enquiry"
sometimes leads to inclusion on a mailing list, and endless
electronic junk mail, thereafter. More sinister is the conspiracy
theory that profiles of Internet surfers can be built up, using
websites visited as data. Naturally, since the technology exists,
there may be the suspicion that it is being used in these ways for
the users of Student Counselling Services websites. The use of hidden
cameras and tape recorders to record clandestinely therapy sessions
is a parallel situation. Here, too, it is possible to worry about
misuse, breaches of confidentiality and respect. However, the Cardiff
SCS website is not set up to spy on its users. It does contain a
couple of simple counters, to collect data on hit rates, but that is
all.
Another use of our website is to publish all the information that
is very rarely required, or looked at, but to the few who need it, is
essential. A disclaimer, for example, or the annual report, or the
mission statement may not be indispensable reading for all, but can
be placed on the website in such a way that they can be viewed by
those who are interested.
This, too is something that a leaflet just could not do.
There is a second population of potential users of student
counselling websites, namely the counsellors. By means of information
generated locally or by means of links to other sites, the SCS
website was also designed as a resource for counsellors. Obviously,
unless there is a password-protected to an area for the use of
counsellors only, care must be taken not to place anything on the
counsellors' pages that could cause embarrassment or distress to
students. I have dealt with this by informing SCS staff that a
significant resource for them are the same self-help links posted for
the use of students. The link to the Royal College of Psychiatry, is
one such example. Another example is the link to the British
Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, the professional body
of many counsellors. We have also used the SCS site to advertise
traineeships in the SCS, thus giving the responsibility for acquiring
the information to the candidate.
When a Student Counselling Service uses the Internet to provide
information for their customers and staff, as well as the significant
benefits there are a few potential pitfalls. However, if you are
aware of the issues, the risks are reduced. I hope that this
exploration of the subject will convince you that a student
counselling services website can be a valuable resource.
For permission to use information from the Cardiff University
Web site, contact Hanno
Koppel.
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