Student Affairs
On-Line
The on-line magazine about
technology and Student Affairs
Gary D. Malaney - Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst
Editor
Stuart Brown - StudentAffairs.com
Executive Editor
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Student Affairs Gary D. Malaney - Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst Editor Stuart Brown - StudentAffairs.com |
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Creating Student Centered Web Pages for Incoming and New Students
Abbey Parsons For the future college students who
have taken few, if any, steps on an actual college campus, the first impression
is crucial in students’ decision-making process on which institution to
attend. From the institution’s perspective,
“the focus of student-centered services is to ensure that each student’s ‘touch
point’ with the institution provides quality, accuracy, and responsiveness
expected by today’s students, whom many think of as customers” (Burnett, 2002,
p. 3). This challenges us to think of
first-year students as savvy customers who are surfing our web pages in search
of consistent messages, pictures, icons and other ways to personally connect
with the institution. Innovative
thinking about elements such as customer service, idea branding and the elimination
of vertical silos will prove to be valuable to a student’s decision-making
process. A feeling of personal
connectedness is key for our students today as they formulate impressions,
which then result in firm decisions about the institution they choose to
attend. Today, many
college students first experience an institution through its website. For students who have a negative experience
navigating through an institution’s website, this raises feelings of confusion
and frustration before a student steps foot on a campus or speaks with anyone
from the campus. For myself, I began to
experience these feelings of confusion as I went to a Home Depot for the first
time. Feeling lost and out of place
before I walked inside, I could perceive a sense of organization as I wandered
throughout the store. An employee, or a
“personal assistant,” asked if I needed help and then said, “I won’t rest until
you, the customer, is happy.” I believe that
an institution’s websites should have this same positive feeling of
connectedness and personal assistance.
For example, when visiting the University of Toledo’s admission page - www.virtualtours.utoledo.edu,
I instantly met three students who took me on an online tour of campus. By the end of the tour, a prospective
student should have felt a sense of connection with his or her own personal
assistants. Additional ways to make
sure that websites are student centered and using positive customer service
models include the following:
Through the
wonders of technology, this challenges us not just to be student-centered, but
to provide students with personal assistance and the best first impression from
when they first click on to an institution’s website. When designing
student-centered web pages, brand identity is one way to create a sense of
connection between a student and an institution’s website. “An organization’s brand is more than a
marketing image; it is its identity.
The brand is a covenant between an organization and its customers. It’s a promise of value, or a relationship,
or uniqueness” (Wheatley, 2002, p. 16).
When working with first year students, the sense of brand identity is
helpful for students to know they belong to the institution. “The brand is communicated at every point of
contact and is visible in everything the customer sees, feels, hears, touches
and smells” (Wheatley, p. 16). Often,
the experience of clicking from web page to web page or department to
department within a single institution can be such a contrasting leap that one
does not feel any sense of connectedness or organization. Unfortunately, individual web pages
sometimes fail even to have any sense of connection to the institution itself. One of my
personal favorites is the University of Utah’s online orientation website - http://webcatalog.cc.utah.edu/orient/online/opening_flash.html. Not only is the orientation’s theme
connected to the institution’s logo and name, but also the university’s fight
song plays at the beginning of the online orientation. For an incoming student, hearing the fight
song before one even reaches campus not only begins to instill a sense of pride
and tradition, but it is another avenue in keeping the student feeling
connected to the institution. While
brand identity can impact both admissions and the experience before a student
arrives, keeping a student feeling connected to an institution and its
resources after he or she begins classes has the possibility of also impacting
retention rates. Finally, in
order to enhance the feeling of connectedness for a first-year student the
institution must present itself in a horizontal manner. For those of us within the institution of
higher education we understand our campus by certain “divisions” – Student
Affairs, Enrollment Management, Business and Finance, Academic Affairs, Office
of Financial Aid, Department of Public Safety, and the list goes on. This language is foreign to a first-year
student. Such silos must be presented
in a horizontal manner in order to better serve the student and his or her
family members. At that point in time,
it is not pertinent for a first year student to know that the Financial Aid
Office is in a different department, or division because it performs a different
function. The student should not have
to feel like he or she is “leaving” one site to go to another site in order to
have access to information that should come from the same institution. This red tape approach adds confusion and
possibly a great deal of frustration. For example,
Illinois State University presents a model approach in confronting this concept
through its website -- http://www.illinoisstate.edu/freshmanlink/. The Freshman Link is a site where the
student, or a visitor such as me, can have a clear, one-stop, comprehensive
resource without having to hunt for the necessary information. A resource such as this site, presented in a
horizontal fashion, will convey the institution’s commitment, support and
effort to understand the student during this challenging point in the college
experience. The confusion is minimized
and the feeling of connectedness is cultivated with every page the student
views. In order to
accomplish this horizontal approach with a great level of success one must
collaborate and communicate effectively with colleagues within the institution
who also work closely with first-year students. It is important to work together in order to create a consistent
look through key pieces of communication such as postcards, brochures, student
handbooks, and websites. Consistent and
accurate information throughout all of these responsive methods will provide a
student with a sense of comfort, confidence, quality, and ultimately a
connectedness with the institution that will lead to satisfaction and
retention. References Burnett, D. J.
(2002). Innovation in student
services: Best practices and process
innovation models and trends. In D. J.
Burnett & D. G. Oblinger (Eds.), Innovation in student services: Planning for models blending high touch/high
tech (pp. 3-14). Ann Arbor,
MI: Society for College and University
Planning. Wheatley, C.
(2002). Delivering the brand
experience: Keeping the promise. In D. J. Burnett & D. G. Oblinger
(Eds.), Innovation in student services:
Planning for models blending high touch/high tech (pp.
15-22). Ann Arbor, MI: Society for College and University Planning.
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