July 2000
Volume 16
Number 4
Developing Web Policies
This topic deserves a great deal of discussion both because of its great importance to colleges and universities and because of the amount of attention it is getting everywhere at the moment. To begin with, it is useful to distinguish among the primary attributes of any institution=s Website: 1) the Aofficial@ public face to the outside world; 2) Aofficial@ communications and interactions meant for internal purposes only; and 3) everything else (Aunofficial,@ meant both for external and internal purposes). By the way, the use of the words Aofficial@ and Aunofficial@ here is for shorthand only; this is an imprecise approximation of the idea of the difference between institutionally-mandated and that which is not.
Websites have proven to be a much larger and more complicated matter than anyone foresaw even just two or three years ago. Understanding the different purposes and natures of the different parts of the campus Website makes it easier to formulate the policies needed to administer them.
The front door
The official external Website, that is, the one that is there primarily for
people outside of the institution to use (prospective students, alumni and
donors, information-gathering agencies, other colleges, etc.), is generally
thought of as another tool in the institution=s
communications strategy.
Concern about look-and-feel, image, navigation, consistency, and information accuracy is generally of primary importance, just as it usually is in the institution=s viewbooks, brochures, annual reports, and other print publications that are intended for public consumption. It is appropriate to have a central authority of some sort for the external Website (and it is often the same person or department who handles the institution=s print publications) so that matters of design, both esthetics and readability, are attended to consistently.
As in all such matters, this authority would generally have some sort of advisory committee to make sure everyone in the community has a chance to provide input. The responsibility for developing content is usually distributed throughout the institution, and each major area of the institution would be expected to participate in some way, but all such content would go through the person Ain charge@ and be edited before actually being put on the Website.
Design is often done by the same person or group that designs print publications. The technical development and implementation might be done by folks at the institution who do other technical work (either in the computer services department or working directly for the person in charge of content and policy), or it might be outsourced. If the pages are designed by an outside organization, special care will have to be given to the means that will be used to modify and otherwise maintain them.
The inside site
The official internal Website has some similar characteristics, the main
difference being that it is usually available to the institution=s
community only. Such things as registering for classes, looking up financial aid
status, paying tuition bills, advising students, accessing course schedules, and
creating student directories are usually included in this category.
There is usually a governing body of some sort (often chaired by the Registrar) to regulate all aspects of this part of the Website. In terms of the design, it is important to have a consistent look-and-feel and for the functions to work in similar ways on different pages.
All of the major administrative software vendors offer Web access to administrative information and Web-based processing of administrative functions, so there would typically be no need for an institution to design or program its own set of applications for those pages. Technical implementation is generally shared between the group responsible for administrative programming and the group responsible for server maintenance.
The deep pages
The third category is quite another matter. For these pages and areas of the
Website, there is generally less need for control, consistency, image, and
universal participation. These might include course sites, administrative and
academic department pages, student pages, athletic team announcements, pages for
faculty to share their research, committee meeting minutes, and so on. The
audiences are both external and internal.
Much of this lends itself to templates, especially for people who do not want to think about Web design but who do want to present information in an effective way, so that some amount of consistency may be achieved naturally. But that does not have to be the goal, nor does it have to be controlled very much (although institutional guidelines as to content may be given to educate people about the unethical and illegal use of intellectual property, and other similar topics). This of course all leads to a fairly chaotic site when looked at from an overall design perspective, but also an information-rich one.
Technical development and implementation (including moving content to an existing portion of the site) can be done by anyone, although there is usually a Webmaster in one of the technical services departments who is responsible for making sure that the site is running properly from a performance and technical standpoint, doing server maintenance, creating new portions of the site, watching out for dead links, and so on.
Putting them together
This is not meant to imply that there is a strict dividing line among these
facets; there isn=t. But if we think
of the overall architecture, we might think of the institution=s
homepage and everything that is one or two links away from the homepage as the
highly controlled external, official portion and any links beyond or outside of
that as the unofficial portion. The internal, official portion should not be
linked from the homepage, but be accessible to the community only through a
highly secure route. The external and internal official portions need to be
highly controlled and consistent and the rest of it does not.
Given all of this, it is important that the structure (committees, rules, guidelines, etc.) that an institution sets up for Web development not be overly bureaucratic, especially since the vast majority of the institution=s Website is likely to be in the unofficial portion.
It makes sense to have a coordinating committee for the unofficial Website (especially for planning), but not a controlling authority. It seems right to provide support for anyone at the institution who wants to use the Web and coordination is important, but since most of the activity is very likely to be for the unofficial aspect of the site, control should be at a minimum. Providing templates, as mentioned above, can be a very useful service, as long as they are not so much rules as voluntary guidelines. Easy-to-use software that creates Web pages should be made widely available (end users should not have to learn HTML). Care should be taken, however, to ensure that the HTML tool chosen for wide use generates Alean@ code, so as not to over-tax the server or incur inordinate delays in transmission over the Internet.
Commercial packages for courseware and support in how to use them should be made available for faculty who want them. Technical support services should be made available to those who need it for more advanced applications. But in general, the creator of the content and the creator of the Web pages to handle the content is the same person, for this aspect of the site. It is perhaps not an overstatement to say that Web page creation is on its way to becoming what word-processing was twenty years ago B a new addition to everyone=s set of basic skills.
Reading the Web
For all the concern that goes into shaping Web policy and page construction,
the fact remains that it is nearly impossible to know much about the readers.
The official pages are, of course, directed to the readership that the
institution has already identified and for which it has honed the presentation.
But there is also a danger in thinking that the official pages suffice to
represent the institution adequately. Prospective students (having come of age
with the Web) will also want to see the student and faculty Aunofficial@
pages B that free-wheeling zone of the
campus site B to complete their visit
to the site
Another important aspect of the reader=s experience that warrants careful attention in the design of the site is performance: how long it takes to load a page for a viewer half-way across the country. Large graphics, multiple frames, and imbedded scripts are all notorious for the drag they add to page load and transmission times and frustration for the viewer.
The surest way to get the full benefit of time and work invested in the Website is to remain aware of the value each of the three aspects brings to the success of the whole and to provide the infrastructure that is appropriate for each. LF
The Edutech Report is a monthly publication of Magna Publications
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