UNH Publishing Platform (PST1)
Cynthia Cargill
Manager, Web and Mobile Development, University of New Hampshire
Jennifer Dykens
Content Strategist/Project Manager, University of New Hampshire
UNH Today and Tomorrow. The new leadership in UNH Communications and Public Affairs wanted to focus on strengthening the UNH brand. They reached out to our Web and Mobile Development team to realize that vision. We worked through the business requirements as a team and built a single platform for the creation and dissemination of UNH developed feature stories and press releases. The platform includes built in approval and publication workflow, enterprise taxonomy, central management, a central database of contributors and aggregate reporting. The content is centrally created and managed. Currently used by CPA staff, the database will be extended to departmental content creators.
A Perfect Storm (PST2)
Grayson Gordon
Campus Web/Database Specialist, Missouri State University-West Plains
After several years of trying to come up with a solution that was end-user friendly and met multiple needs, the planets aligned and a jewel was found. How I utilized Rise Vision's web-based digital signage system and Google Sheets to create a single content source for digital signage, printing and a WordPress blog.
Outcomes:
Evaluate online resources
Observe integration possibilities
Analyze end-user ease of use
Growing Professionally Through Podcasting (PST3)
Lougan Bishop
Social Media & Digital Marketing Specialist, Belmont University
Jackie Vetrano
Social Media Assistant, Skidmore College
In this poster session, Lougan Bishop and Jackie Vetrano will talk about their experience hosting Higher Ed Social, a weekly podcast that interviews professionals in higher education. We'll offer tips on how to start your own podcast and talk about the unique experiences we've had.
Herding Cats - From Application to Alum (PST4)
Aaron Knight
Senior Programmer/Analyst, SUNY-ESF
We pay a lot of attention to the admissions and application process, and the public face of our institutional bureaucracies. Let’s talk about breaking down the internal barriers – be they systems, silos, or offices – that keep our potential students from becoming our students (and later, our alumni).
One Calendar to Rule Them All: Finding Success with a Centralized Event Calendar (PST6)
Charley Allen
Web Manager, Murray State University
Creating a centralized event calendar is on the to-do list of most institutions. Creating a centralized calendar that succeeds is almost impossible. We will share our insights, our what-not-to-dos, and give you plenty of ideas to take back to your team to get started!
Open House Insta-game: Bonanza or Bust? (PST7)
Larry Falck
Coordinator of Digital Media, Francis Marion University
We wanted to find a way to engage potential students more at our open houses and bolster a hashtag used for general marketing and engagement. Our idea was an Instagram game where open house attendees would take a picture of themselves on campus and use the hashtag in order to get a t-shirt at the end of the day. The poster will show the outcome of our efforts and the lessons learned from our implementation of the game.
Sharing Worldwide Stories With a Team of One (PST8)
Kara Sassone
Web Producer & Social Media Specialist, Northeastern University College of Science
Your students are studying around the world. They're doing amazing things. You want to tell their (awesome) stories. You want to share your students' successes. But you're a team of one.
How are you going to do this? Come hear how I accomplished this and heard some of the most amazing stories from our students.
Tell Your School’s Story with Video: The Basics and Beyond (PST9)
Mira Zimet
Zimet@dornsife.usc.edu, University of Southern California
This poster session explains how to maximize video production with limited time and resources. Presenter shares strategic video storytelling approaches that provide unique opportunities to engage your constituents and raise your YouTube hits. She will discuss how the USC Dornsife Communication uses pieces to garner coverage from major media outlets, engage stakeholders and build institutional pride. A breakdown of equipment for in-house production, as well as ideas on re-purposing out-sourced video content for events, donor/steward cultivation, and online video marketing will also be shared.
The Kitchen is Closed: Main Menus, User Experience, and Competing Orders (PST10)
Amanda Billy
Web Manager, Jacksonville University
Regardless of your organization or industry, the main menu of your website is arguably one of the most important elements you will develop. As the roadmap to your site and one of your users’ primary tools for getting around, its importance cannot be overstated. However, balancing web strategy, usability and information architecture best practices, and the perpetual influx of requests and demands from your various campus partners can be challenging, if not harrowing, for a well-intentioned web manager or administrator. What links should you include? What should they be called? Which should you omit? How do you get started? This poster presentation will explore the navigation development process, including the incorporation of goals and analytics in your decision-making process and the most common headings and links your users will encounter as they explore other higher education websites. The goal: to stop taking orders and solidify a main menu that works for your site.
There and Back Again: A Beaver's Tale (PST11)
Callie Newton
writer/editor/web editor, Oregon State University
Do you want to travel abroad to help tell the story of what makes your University great, but have absolutely no idea where to start? This is, of course, a huge undertaking, but it can be done. This presentation will teach you how to find funding for travel projects, what makes a good documentary or long-form story and how to get there and back all in one piece.
Web Maintenance Made Easier: A Campus-wide Collaboration (PST12)
Joel Vertin
Digital Services Manager, Michigan Technological University
Quentin Franke
Front End Developer, Michigan Technological University
We've all talked about it: how do you keep your University's many websites updated? Do you centralize web maintenance? Let each department fend for themselves? Create a shared governance model? Web presence is essential. But how do we 'feed the beast'?
Learn how Michigan Technological University found a solution that's working for a campus that includes more than 150 CMS-driven websites across five colleges and schools and numerous academic and administrative departments—a shared maintenance model with room for customization based on time, needs, and skill.
If your institution struggles with web maintenance, from buy-in, to funding, to determining responsibilities, this presentation is for you. We'll share the tactics, lessons learned, and successes from our eight-year journey and show that there is hope.
Building the EDGE Paradigm (PST13)
Comet Blecha
Project Manager, Augustana EDGE Center
Kyle Zeberlein
Developer, Augustana EDGE Center
This student organization model dating back to the late 90’s continues to expand its reach at Augustana College. Continuing focuses on advertising, marketing, and portfolio development have pushed the Augustana EDGE Center even further by creating more experiential learning opportunities for students. These programs, in addition to the Web Guild, advantEDGE Design, video editing, and event planning, continue to expand the EDGE Center’s reach in number of students as well as clients.
New Aspect Ratio in Marketing : Embracing Television Devices (PST14)
Joseph Murphy
Digital Strategist, Ohio University
With the advent of television devices and the user base hitting over half a billion, it is crucial to understand how to market and create content for these devices and consumers. Analytics is showing an increase in the connected TV marketplace. This poster presentation will show the marketer how to recognize within Google analytics (and others) visitors coming from connected TV devices. Understand how your current content displays to these devices, how is usage different than mobile, and how will your advertising need to be adjusted to engage these users.
Dude, Where's My Seat? Tracking and Counting Visitors with Security Cameras (PST15)
Conny Liegl
Lead Designer, California Polytechnic State University
Kennedy Library started a project to track library gate count, occupancy, and building usage so that we can make better-informed facilities and library services decisions while providing live “heat maps” to students showing potentially available seating throughout the building.
The new system is based on security cameras with embedded counting software. The cameras are not used for video surveillance, rather they have embedded software that anonymously count the number of people that cross an imaginary line. The software is directional and can determine if people are coming or going. We have developed a database that collects statistics in near real-time, allowing us to create custom reporting.
Statistics proved the accuracy of the new cameras. Currently, 36 cameras are placed throughout the library at all ingress-egress points. This allows us to track building occupancy on a floor-by-floor basis (covering all five floors). We hope to then cross-reference WiFi Access Point data to determine where people are clustered on each floor so that we can develop visual heat maps of floor-by-floor activity in real time.
The maps can be displayed on digital signage, our website, and on mobile devices. This will allow us to tell students where they may find available seating, and it will also provide us with detailed building occupancy data we can use to inform library program changes, building projects, and the like.
Digital Analog: Why You Should Build a Living Website with Stickies (PST16)
Cristina Cruz
Web Designer and Developer, University of San Diego
Joy Brunetti
University Web Manager, University of San Diego
Whether you are undergoing a redesign or just doing a content audit of your site, it can be challenging to get your stakeholders to separate navigation from site architecture and website usability. This presentation will go over tips and tricks for guiding a site audit in a way that everyone can understand.
Drawing on several successful collaborations at the University of San Diego, we'll highlight the importance of bringing stakeholders together in a "war room" to contribute to a visual mapping of their new site's information architecture. This mapping exercise allows the redesign team to step away from the computer and put stickies to paper–literally–to build the new and improved site, hopefully with 40%-60% less content in the end.
The collaborative approach allows stakeholders to think beyond their navigation (and their ideas of what the site should be) and keeps their focus on the end user. It also allows developers and designers to weigh in on best practices and development ideas earlier on in the process.
Ultimately this approach has led to reduced redundancies in content and a final site that is navigable and usable by prospective students. There's greater "buy-in" by stakeholders too since they help shape the new website and watch it come to life.
You'll learn:
- What is a "war room" and how to prepare one
- Who should be involved and what role they play
- How to guide the team and prepare for next steps
Unforgettable: Transforming Commencement into an Interactive Experience (PST17)
Katie Santo
Web Training and Content Support Specialist, New York University
Debbi Litt
Digital Communication Specialist, New York University
It’s challenging to create a sense of community on a non-traditional campus. As a means to address this issue at New York University, the Digital Communications Group launched #CongratagradNYU in 2013 to build a stronger, more engaged digital and global community. #CongratagradNYU is an immersive and interactive commencement experience for all students, faculty, family, and friends, regardless of their location.
By attending this session, you’ll have the opportunity to learn how to:
-Build a strategic content plan for social media around commencement
-Curate student content and integrate into your content strategy
-Leverage relationships in and outside of your organization to build a successful campaign
This presentation will simulate the experience of a graduate on commencement day at NYU.
A Marketer's Dream: Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics for mROI (PST18)
Curtis Wech
Senior Marketing Specialist, Wisconsin Lutheran College
Learn how Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics can transform your website into a data powerhouse, satisfying the desires of your CMO. Leverage analytics tools in collaboration with your marketing department, to assess marketing Return on Investment, optimize your website for lead generation, and guide content strategy for your school.
Carved Code: Connecting Digital Natives with Traditional Aboriginal Art (PST19)
Alan Etkin
Senior Analyst, British Columbia Institute of Technology
How do you bridge the divide between a generation seeing the world through the lens of a cell phone, and traditional aboriginal art? When the British Columbia Institute of Technology commissioned a Coast Salish house post for our main campus, we embraced this cultural challenge by creating a unique digital space and a hand-carved QR code mounted on the post. Visit the site on your cell phone at www.bcit.ca/housepost, come hear the story behind it, and learn how you can use Google Analytics to measure the business value of any project, quirky or not.
Forecast: Clear Skies. A Collaborative Approach to Creating a Student Success App. (PST20)
Michele Rund
Senior Web Designer/Developer, Purdue University
In spring of 2016, the Purdue Studio Team began development on its latest project, Forecast. Forecast is an app that encourages students to adopt behaviors that, based on the analysis of over 4 years of data on nearly 24,000 students, appear to correlate with student success. Once the key behaviors were identified, it became apparent that clear presentation of the data and careful communication of the message it conveyed would be important factors in the app’s reception among the students and faculty. As a result, a committee was formed to address these issues and help Forecast become a more useful tool for improving student success. This poster session will explore how Forecast has evolved and improved through this collaboration with representatives from from faculty, staff, and students across various academic disciplines and departments within the university.
Mission Possible: Leveraging your website to support Ph.D. recruiting (PST21)
Kirstin Swagman
Marketing Communications Specialist, University of Nevada, Reno
At the University of Nevada, Reno, the mission was clear: help recruit research-oriented Ph.D. students to support our growing research portfolio. But for the marketing team, the tactics were muddy. Who are our prospective Ph.D. students? How do they consume our content? What channels can we use to reach them? After some failed attempts to replicate our undergraduate recruiting tactics for a completely different audience, we decided to dig into some research. Our team conducted focus groups, online surveys and web usability testing to map out the application cycle, tailor web content to specific concerns of graduate students, and develop a pro-active recruiting plan.
In this presentation, you’ll learn how Ph.D. students evaluate potential programs and how you can tailor your web content to an audience with highly specialized interests in your research and your faculty. We’ll also share how we built cross-campus alliances to support new communications flows and CRM software.