Helping prospective graduate students find information about MSU Jim Green Academic Computing and Network Services Chair, MSU Web Team Christina Tower University Relations July 19, 2006

This meeting’s purpose  Review the current situation and recent developments  Gather information from stakeholders and interested parties  Begin a dialog process toward determining the best course of action  Decide on the next steps

MSU Web Team  MSU Web Team Joint UR/LC&T team oversees content, design, and infrastructure with direction from upper management advises and assists departments with their web initiatives facilitate web design that will fit in with official MSU web sites

Background  redesign project: “graduate portal” as a follow-on project “prospective students” is top target audience information architecture – findability – is the top design priority  redesignwww.msu.edu  2006 admissions.msu.edu redesign  search.msu.edu redesign  May 15 meeting with Janet and Les

Basic tasks find program information degrees majors/minors fields/areas of study interdisciplinary programs apply online special program/dept. procedures find research and teaching opportunites assistantships learn about and apply for financial aid find information about the MSU and EL communities

Current situation  multiple “front doors” -- institutional grad.msu.edu (Graduate School) admissions.msu.edu/beaspartan.com (Admissions) (VP for Research and Graduate Studies) (MSU’s main web site) (Career Services & Placement)  and at the college level (College of Nat. Sci.) (Arts & Letters) (CAS) me=Prospective%20Students&pagename=Department%20Links (College of Ag.) me=Prospective%20Students&pagename=Department%20Links

Case Study – program information  Multiple lists of programs/majors Registrar Academic Programs and Descriptions of Courses Admissions – majors list MSU web site academic programs list Graduate School colleges and programs list

Potential issues  Decentralization presents problems for users  Information overlaps and gaps  Programs, degrees, majors, minors, fields of study  Multiple places to look for information  Never sure you’ve seen all that’s available  Lack of uniformity in how information is arranged  Need to search/browse across all sources of info searchers vs. browsers  PDF format is a barrier

Examples from other institutions  Cornell no keyword search, but drop-down combined with tabbed info display are fairly effective  Minnesota A to Z majors – searchable multiple lists and catalogs  Ohio State Separate programs and fields of study lists Programs – searchable; Fields of Study is A to Z only

Possible courses of action  Do nothing  Minor adjustments to existing resources  Further investigation meetings, brainstorming focus groups, usability studies  Smaller, targeted projects programs/fields database/search “Be a Spartan” for grads? …  Larger graduate resources web design project where would this fit?

Further information  Jim Green, Coordinator, Academic Systems  Academic Computing and Network Svcs.    PowerPoint and handout: