DIIA Blog

Being a web worker in higher education has unique challenges: Shoestring budgets, campus politics, the generation gap between faculty and students, and serving disparate audiences. Come learn about the web in higher education — and what lessons the higher education web can teach the broader Web world.

U of W. Idea came from going to conferences, with a little packet of people from higher ed. Then there’s him. Wanted to get h.e. people together and talk about the issues we have now. #sxswed.

Comparing higher ed Webs to corporate world. Targeting–marketing recruitment. Should we be targeting high school seniors, or the outlying 45+. Budget cuts–as much as 20-30%. If your incoming class is that much bigger, does your budget go up? In Australia by 2011 or 12, the budget you get from the govt. will depend on how many students you attract. In higher ed, budget seems to be more set in stone. Whole collaborative nature of higher ed. Can usually throw something out on the Web or Twitter, and share issues, ideas, solutions. Don’t see that as much in the corporate world. Everyone is working on Web tools together and how to make them better.

5 basic difference in higher ed.
Worst of two worlds, downside of startup, downside of building corporation. Some universities are threatening to shut down the entire Web team (avert)!

The hierarchy: professors are wonderful people, highly specialized. None have a degree in the Web, and have incredible theories about health care, but don’t understand the Web.

Age gap: survey, 1 question. Do you think the course materials (syllabi, etc.) should be available on line? 2 of 3 students said yes, 2 of 3 faculty say no.

Little budgets means lots of small teams with no money. Lots of generalists, not a lot of specialists. Higher ed has trouble keeping the specialists. Want to find cheaper solutions, and gravitate more toward open sources. Corollary: women tend to be underrepresented all across the Web EXCEPT in higher ed. Why is that so? If you’re able to innovate a little bit, you get a massive return. Case Western University–Web redesign. 40% decrease in bounce rate just by redesigning their Web space.

Customer service: ivory tower is not very customer friendly. Where they’ve been able to be so, find big benefits. Surveyed students about the Web, open box, what are your issues? Surveyed on student services (admissions, etc.). Everyone hated their Web site, everyone loved their student affairs coordinator. Who was the person who created the Web site’s information? It was the person who was able to handle more students with more praise. She didn’t know anything about a Web site. Used Word, other non-best practices, couldn’t write for the Web. Should have been where she was most effective: 1 on 1 with students.

Don’t be afraid to take risks, especially if they’re cheap. Facebook, Twitter, pay someone to take care of those.

Many universities don’t think about when it gets really big–2000 questions/hour. How you allocate your resources will determine how successful you are.

Always be present. Do what it takes to say anytime, anywhere, how can we be the most helpful.

Question: difference in higher ed–people in the administrative versus academic area. Some cases where there is more of a budget when working with administrators rather than academics.

Some universities have marketing teams.

Redesign sites and bring into a CMS so that folks can handle it easier. Expectations of what it takes by far outstrip the actual work involved. Until 2002, UT Web was posted by ITS, who got it technically correct, but wasn’t an attractive draw for users.

Transition period in the UK, used to be primarily government funding, also a living expenses grant. Don’t do as many massive conferences as in the US. We are not alone, UK is suffering the same pain and misery.

Faculty is part of the development process. Brought up IITAP, suggested that people check out the program. Nice mix of faculty, designers, admin.

Put time and resources in for 6 months, make suggestions, then couldn’t close the sale. Find a champion, a hero for this change.

IT holding back, marketing/communications pushing. Where does the IT sit? In marketing? Both?

Does one Web team do front end, with a different team doing back end? How many do both? How many are you the only Web team?

Brand style guide for the Web. Concrete rules for developing Web size, from font size to color to writing for the Web.

Try to figure out solutions where things happen automatically. Has to be as easy and seamless as possible for your users. That’s what a lot of h.e. folks are trying to figure out.

Regarding faculty (go Keene!), many times they just don’t know what’s out there technologically. Sit down with them and show them what they might be able to do, to the point they can pick up the ball themselves. Younger, tenure track faculty are hurting when they find out that there’s no place for Web technologies, projects. It’s easy to be against something you’re afraid of, easy to be afraid of something you don’t understand. Needs to be that internal education.

Solutions: what’s our biggest problem right now? Money.

How can the Web make relationships more intimate, user-centered? Social media makes it possible for more people to communicate online. You get on those sites to meet, talk, learn, and share with other people. Build those connections through Web tools. If you see a potential student on Twitter, accommodate them when they actually visit.

One university has a degree that you can obtain solely in Second Life–Texas State Technical College in Waco. Good one!!

Another university using Facebook. Any others successful? How do you measure success with Facebook? At UCLA launched one with the Chancellor. He takes the time to answer personally–open forum. Have another general one. Can hold polls, gather data, have data like age, etc. Create the connection and have feedback back and forth. Survey incoming students–200 out of 350 kids use Second Life.

Walden University–internet based university. Use Facebook to recruit, faculty lecture series–use Facebook to advertise all their events. Do very little face to face, snail mail, everything is online. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace have become integral parts.

Alumni of DePauw. Started Facebook page last year, now have 3500 fans. Postings on Facebook showed that alumni really wanted the university to use e-mail, so it happened.

Canadian university–alumni posts events on Facebook, use spread to alumni all around the world.

Buzz on Facebook generates growth of event attendees: “Are you going to xxx? Yeah? Well I guess I will too.”

You can target updates to fans. Can target by age range, location, etc. to get alums or current students. USE PAGES!

Anyone using Facebook? Courses 2.0 in Facebook? Alumni Bridges?

Should h.e. go to larger e-mail clients like gmail? What are the consequences?

Universities have a hard time building and maintaining Web infrastructure. It’s astronomical what we’re charging each other, when it’s up to 85% cheaper off campus.

ASU and Boston College turned their e-mail services off and just forward to gmail.

Universities need to collaborate better within their organizations. Students eventually become alumni. Why not hand off to alumni? Maybe not that group, but a group that can maintain.

Web accessibility: UT–follows 508, except for media–remediate on request.

UH is going to have code review before it goes live. Should have an accessibility team.

Dear Glenda Sims pipes up–she’s the expert at UT: Who has enterprise tools that allow you to look across your whole site, validation, etc.? Hardly anyone. A good CRM will allow you to do this. IBM Rational Policy Tester (former WebXM, Bobbie) UT purchased one b/c it allowed us to find security issues, include accessibility and quality scan. SSNs, credit card numbers. World Place is a new site on Target. World Space may be more affordable. Do we like the IBM software? Glenda gets what she wants all about it. CSUN this Friday. Glenda says it requires alcohol (ahem!)

UCLA has a culture of sharing. Brilliant people hide in the departments. Have Web publisher groups to create community (UT has as well). How do you find them? Search your university name on Twitter. Office gossip.

IDEA: half day conferences on us, who we are, what we do, blog, Twitter, build and continue the conversations and add new hires when they come on. Furnish a community they can join right away.

The outsiders don’t know or trust the Web team. Needs to be overcome by communications–educating and informing. No one does that enough. Don’t tell people how things should be. Who has had success locally, and what have you learned? More of an open learning situation that can be very helpful–people doing the same thing.

Meet with people on a 1 to 1 basis. Universities are great for committees. Usually have a few who dominate, railroad. 1 on 1, feel more listened to, you have all the pieces of the puzzle, b/c you’ve been keeping up with all the suggestions.

How is the economy going to affect students/parents activity on the Web. 70% of incoming students say that they learn the most on their first visit, not from the Web sites.

How can we do better communicating on the Web? Student enrollment typically goes up in bad economy, better to get more education. Community college enrollments up. Some regions, cc.s are going way up, 4year going down. Dollar stretches further at cc’s.

What is the value of your institution’s degree? Prove the value of why you come to the institution, rather than heritage enrollment.

Are there things in your job you feel good about? Wish challenges were technical and not political. We love our jobs.

Is there a place we can continue this conversation? cuwebd.ning.com Meetup tweetup higher ed tonight at Buffalo Billiards.

In many regions, the mobile phone is the primary tool for Web access. As mobile Web connections increase in developing nations the impact will be significant. This panel examines the differences between mobile Web access in developing and developed regions and how the mobile Web can affect social development.

Opera makes Web browsers for mobile phones.

20th anniversary of the initial founding of W3C. Take the Web world-wide and make it accessible to everyone.

Tech, entertainment, connecting are most important aspects.

Open Mobile Terminal Platform–initiative to de-fragment mobile access so that any widget will run on any device, potentially other devices–TVs, cars. Huge potential in developing countries. Doing in a royalty-free manner to accommodate world markets.

What do you see people doing with the mobile Web, and why is it interesting?

Matt: roughly a billion people use the Web, but leaves out a huge segment. 80% of the world’s pop has some form of mobile network coverage. The mobile Web should be the starting point from where we make it accessible to everyone.

Kofi: development of products has greatly increased. The accessibility of tech in general have allowed companies who aren’t based in Africa to see a channel in which they can innovate. Not the same as it is in the West. Standard ways of doing business, rolling out projects. Mobile allows a lot of research. Gives the company an idea of what the market is doing.

If people have access to a mobile phone, they have access to water. Have more access than through computers. Starting to see the platforms coming through, browsers having ability to give better mobile experience.

Many people use the mobile Web in the US. Look I have a shiny toy. In theory, I could browse the Web, but sit down at my desk. People in developing worlds don’t use computers because they don’t have power, but do have mobile network. Opera has a mini-platform for people who just want access to the Web. They don’t actually care that they have a mobile, it’s simply the only access.

How does that device allow you to live–work, make money, communicate. See people using the tools for purposes they weren’t originally meant for. When you try to implement . Necesseity allows for both developer and user to innovate.

Mobile is cheap to manufacture, more so than computer.

Many don’t even have a bank account. Travel 4 hours to the nearest place they can transfer money. Remote villages can access marketing information. What will we see in the future? We can learn new applications that we’ve never thought of before to meet diverse needs.

Discussion here about productization. Maybe products need to be designed for the circumstances people are in, rather than how many mobile phones can we sell? What about designing to the local situations rather than adapting to the marketplace.

Tuesday: Mobile for social good panel.

Develop for the Western market, and assume that it will be used in the same way or adapted when it goes overseas. It does not work. It doesn’t look good on the financials, for core consumers. Need to look at local cultures and customs. Uniqueness of emerging products is related to how the community grows or can grow. Develop products around that to be effective.

Create platforms so that people can self-sustain, and develop whatever they need or want. Trying to open up the platforms so they will be able to do that. Got to give people the tools to develop themselves. Currently a closed system–the bar is too high. Everything should be open, royalty-free for emerging markets.

If you don’t have something that suits what the markets need, they don’t buy it. Top applications in other countries are like Facebook. They are just living their lives, just want to connect.

Examples of actual services: mobile banking, health care information, agricultural marketing, plenty of examples of good appications.

Affects language and literacy issues. The idea is that you develop the platforms, allows people to think about what the possibilities are. Have to be keen on the experimental aspect.

Indian Railways Web site. Biggest in India. The next is a resource service, especially in agriculture. The biggest use today is social media. Anything to connect.

Everyone’s life has been affected by the Web. They want and need to connect with people. A huge aspect of their lives, just like ours. There is an amazing difference in the products people use, to get that connection.

Mobile as a browser, or data moving? It’s all the Web, not just functions. How-tos becoming more relevant. Many areas are dangerous. Create a network so that you can keep tabs on natural disasters, political unrest or violence, help governments get out information.

Local content is relevant as well. Devices that allow developing countries to develop their own local, relevant content.

Mobile=while I’m walking along. The distinction actually is fading fast. It’s becoming a continuum. When you have physically hostile environments. Dangerous neighborhoods, having a device with you makes a difference with what you can and will do with it.

Think about one Web, not a separate Web that’s mobile. Always going to have devices with different characteristics, people will use it in a variety of unexpected ways. One Web, all connected.

Bandwidth: internet access might be very weak. Thinking about low bandwidth unit coming to a particular device.

Text vs. Web. How do you get information to people who have only text access. There are products for emerging areas in development right now. People should have the option to be able to communicate, whether it’s text or Web. Simply develop in text. Applications should match the language and literacy. More important than access to Facebook. How can you affect text to allow community to grow? Lots of options for text, need to be explored.

Smart phone market is more proportionately needed in developing countries. Don’t want in the middle products–want the highest capability to get the best access. They will in turn pass it along to text-only users, creating different kinds of networks.

Focus should be on developing according to access in the actual location. People will share. Work with where you are, build services and products based on that.

One of the big problems is the back-haul between countries, not within countries.

Design challenges are not much different than developing 15 years ago.

Hardware & life cycle: brittle devices? open source applications? In developing countries you see devices used differently than here–a hairdryer to do something else. If you have very expensive components, or completely encased so they’re impossible to repair, will not be useful. Let’s have a standard firmware in the device, leave programming to free open source software.

People do a lot of repairing of phones, handed around, long lifecycle. They tend to take better care of device, learn how to repair device.  Open hardware is great, if it’s cheaper. They care more about how it works, what it costs. Traditional research scientific model–reduces replication of work, but if someone can produce the same thing cheaper, people will buy the cheaper.

Widgets–Web applications that will run over any mobile phone. Widgets are hotted up bookmarks. There will be a move to do more mobile stuff in a Web browser. Easy to work, don’t have to pick devices or browsers. More careful thought about clean design. Will always be a place for specific applications–tuning of rendering, Most people don’t care about sub-pixel errors. All they care about is pictures a words on a page.

Current problem: heavy proprietary development: iPhone. They’ve been cracked. When the iPhone launched, there was no Web app store for the iPhone. Apps were all for computer browsers.

To do more business in developing areas, drop the cost down to zero. Putting out more stuff may make things better, but cheaper helps more people. Provide things people want, that will bring change to people’s lives. Sometimes even the big bad operations provide access, so not so bad.

Pricing and licensing done as they are in the US. This may be the entire salary of someone in Guatemala. Celltel, other telecoms base pricing on subscribers. In Africa, people share–so how do you price it? If there’s only one phone in an entire area? This is where people need to think more locally than globally. Do your research, how are people using it, how can you adapt? Include lifecycle, licences, etc. R

Regulators and big companies need to be thinking in terms of adaptation–how do they fit into the market? It’s an eternal process, because the market is dynamic, and people and their needs change.