The website refresh plan
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 at 06:35AM Many of us, I'm sure, identify with the old vaudeville plate spinning act. The acrobat/comedian/fool sets an impossible number of fragile dinnerware pieces rotating on top of tall poles, catching each toppling plate a fraction of a second before it loses all centrifugal force and crashes. The more last minute the "save," the greater the wobbly entertainment value.
When many of us start a project, once it is truly "spinning," we then go on to give our attention back to other projects that might be tipping - or just as likely get out another stick and plate. Those items that seem to be steady get very few extra spins from us.
One of the "plates" that looks like it needs a little push is our district's website. The current iteration has been running for about five years pretty smoothly but is looking a little stale. And we need to make some serious decisions about its future purpose.
Our website has two primary purposes: 1) as a means of promoting our district and providing the general community reliable and current information, and 2) as a means for teachers to provide specific information and materials to their students and parents.
Given the rise of Moodle and what seems to be a general demand? for online components to F2F classes, I am questioning whether one website can continue to do a good job meeting both purposes. (Yes, vendors, I am sure yours does. No need to contact me.) The general public seems to expect a more interactive experience with their online resources. How do we provide that beyond having Facebook fan pages and Twitter feeds coming from our PR office?
So we're hoping to do a web site evaluation. Working with the PR office, we are planning to poll our parents about what they use and what they would like to have available. We'll run F2F "usability" trials with focus groups based on the results of the survey (How easy is it to find the most asked-for information?) And finally we'll put a proposal together for a web-site redesign.
I'm kind of excited.
Anyway, below is a short survey we'll be sending to our households (via Forms on GoogleDocs). Trying to keep it both specific and short is tough. But what might be missing? How have you evaluated your school's website?
Survey of households on the use of the district website
Please check the items you currently use and find useful on the Mankato Area Public School’s website.
District-wide
- News and events (including weather related school closings)
- Forms to subscribe to district news text messages and e-mails.
- General school calendar
- Testing calendar
- Calendar of sports, music and other extra curricular events
- Employment opportunities
- Strategic Roadmap/Information booklet/District newsletters/Budget reports
- School supply list
- School board information - meeting agendas and minutes, policies, contact information
- Foundation information
- Food service including daily breakfast and lunch menus
- Curriculum information
- Health service information
- Special education information
- Career and guidance information
- Library and technology information
- Early childhood information
- Transportation including bus routes and school district boundaries
- Contact information for district employees
- Community education resources
- Links to online learning and research resources
School building information
- Staff directory for the building and teachers (phone numbers, e-mail address)
- School address
- School building calendar
- Newsletters/School improvement plans
- Library media center information and the library catalog
- Parent Teacher Organization information
Classroom information
- Teacher’s phone and e-mail address
- General classroom information/About the teacher information
- Learning resources such as worksheets, study guides, spelling lists, recommended reading materials, etc.
- Links to online resources to support the curriculum
- Class syllabus or list of units
Note that individual grades, assignment status, attendance and other information is available from a separate parent portal into our student information system in our district.
Please list any other items that you find on the website but are not on the list above.
Please list any other items that you would like to find on the website, but are not available or are not easily found.
My children are in (check all that apply):
_____ preschool
_____ K-6
_____ 7-8
_____ 9-12
Reader Comments (11)
Sounds like fun! I would make a suggestion on a product to look at; Kentico CMS. Does a lot of the rSchooltoday functionality with some additional functionality. The key thing being that you can have content "expire" so that the website does not seem "stale."
I personally would be checking there to make sure you have a technology plan. LOL.
Mary
I could write about this for pages, but my main tips are these:
1) If you ask people what they want to have on your website, they will make up answers because they honestly aren't that self-aware. Seriously, you'll get bad data. Look at what they're searching for in your search tool's stats and what pages are currently visited the most in your web stats. Look at what's popular on other district's websites (and talk with their webmasters till you find the good ones!). If you want to do usability tests, get "Don't Make Me Think!" by Steve Krug (any edition). It's the best, quickest read on web usability with a great chapter on usability testing.
2) Don't force the teachers to do anything. It won't work. Make web tools available, make them known, offer training and support, and if they're good, teachers will use them.
3) Offer Moodle or some other LMS that your district controls. You want a closed area where students and teachers can discuss classwork without any FERPA concerns. (Yes, this means you're absolutely right that you need more than one website/tool.)
4) Don't get School Center, School Wires, Final Site, or any other paid "teacher website" tool. They are all becoming increasingly irrelevant. Offer Sites through Google Apps for Education, and let your teachers set up blogs or wikis or Facebook pages/groups, then link to those from the school's website.
5) If you're like everyone else, your community connects with your schools (and teachers) much more strongly than with your whole district. Focus on making the school websites good. Work with the principals to find staff who love the school and want to help maintain the school websites, don't just give it to the secretary or the tech teacher.
6) Use your district homepage to feature pictures and success stories from the schools, especially if your district homepage is set to be the homepage on most of your computers. Students and staff love to see themselves featured like this, and your parents/the community will realize that you have tons of success stories happening every single day.
This is really a relevant conversation to have with your community. "Websites" are not what they were 10 or 15 years ago. They have almost become an artistic statement rather than a utilitarian communication tool. I have found that reversing the traditional data flow is now what people expect; they don't want to retrieve data, they want it delivered to them.
You may wan to investigate Whipple Hill. They have a product that pulls only relevant content to the end user based on their group designation. For example, if you're in the "parent" group, you never see information on alumni (unless you're in that group too).
It is amazing how much you guys offer. I am thankful to have found you this year. All the best through the evaluation and into the rest of 2011.
Thanks, Jim. "Cobweb" pages are a consistent problem. I just dread trying to move content from one provider to another along with all the training it will require. But it may come to that. Have nothing else to do!
Doug
Hi Mary,
I'm sure our tech plan leads the page count on our website now. I suppose I should look at it once in awhile too.
Doug
Hi Dave,
Send me your real email address sometime. Your comments are great and will be seriously considered as we work to improve our site. I think concentrating on the building sites is a great idea.
Oh, I love Don't Make Me Think. I just wish I could remember who I lent my copy to!
Doug
Hi J,
It is an evolving area, for sure. I'll look at the product you mention. Thanks!
Doug
In my experience, surveys may not be the way to find this information. As Dave says above, analyzing search data would be more effective.
As a frustrated user of three district websites, I'll tell you what I usually look for: 1) the calendar so I can figure out why my teenagers are home from school today. My district offers an events calendar which isn't updated regularly and a PDF calendar which I have to search for each time I look. Two other districts I look at regularly have downright ugly events calendars with unprofessional-looking clip art. None are easy to use. A simple Google calendar that displays a week's worth of events would be so much more useful, along with a highly visible link to the color PDF yearly calendar. 2) teacher email addresses. I don't usually want to email administrators, but I frequently contact teachers at many different schools in the districts. I would love to be able to use a searchable directory at the district level that lets me find a teacher in any school. I would also like the directory to include the classes they teach.
Beyond that, do I ever look at anything else on district websites? School closing information. Board policies. But, as a librarian, the thing that makes me respect a school or university is whether I have to dig to find a link to the library. With that in mind, I clicked on West High School and saw that you can find the "media center" easily, but they have a *LIST* of other "quick links" that you might want. Ack!
"Given the rise of Moodle and what seems to be a general demand? for online components to F2F classes, I am questioning whether one website can continue to do a good job meeting both purposes."
Totally agree. I believe the district's main site should be separate (integrated if possible though) from the online tools, LMS, teacher web sites.
Hi Jude,
Your comments will be helpful. I am less skeptical of the value of a user survey. If people don't know what they want, how can I help?
The problem with "distributed" websites like ours is that there is little uniformity among buildings and, indeed, among media centers. Perhaps I need to rule with a more "iron fist?"
Appreciate the comment,
Doug
Thanks, Melissa. Any examples of where this has been done particularly well?
Doug
I think a user survey and parent "user group" testing is valuable. You will see trends and what the community and parents look for when visiting.
This is exactly why having a separate tool or site for LMS and tech integration tools should be considered separately. Because the end result and audience for teaching and learning is different than a community members wondering if their child should go to this district or a parent wanting a teacher's email!
As far as the integration piece...#1 thing to remember when choosing products...if you choose a paid for, commercial service it will be very difficult to integrate with other tools and your systems. When you do not have "back end" access it's hard to "integrate".
A few quick integrations I know about:
-Google Apps/Moodle SSO Plugin
-Joomla/Moodle (haven't tested..plus if you have the knowledge anything can be done)
-Google API has endless opportunities to integrate with another open source program - all you need it knowledge.
-Moodle 2.0 will have much improved API and integrations..and again anything is possible with open source.
Hi Melissa,
Unfortunately, smaller districts like ours tend not to have the ability to hire technicians who have the kind of programming skills (or time) to create customized websites like you describe. We are a bit more at the mercy of commercial providers. You describe a very practical and useful solution for districts with in-house expertise.
I do appreciate the perspective of having separate "public information" and "learning management" apps. We'll see how serious our district gets about offering online classes or encouraging blended teaching.
Appreciate the comments,
Doug