Web Focus Group Results
Over 50% of our focus group participants reported that they were “Stealth Applicants,” meaning they did not contact us before submitting an application. They intensely scrutinized three areas of our website: faculty profiles, course descriptions, and alumni stories.
Faculty Profiles
Our focus group participants reported that they read faculty profiles of their intended programs, especially focusing on their future professors’ academic and professional network. Check out Peter Shaw’s new faculty profile to imagine how we could make these pages more charming and authentic.
Google Analytics: The Faculty page under Academics gets over 1,000 views per month. All of the Faculty by Program pages get more than 100 views per month, with policy and business in the 200s and T&I in the 300s. Anna Vassilieva, Leo van Lier, Jeffrey Bale, Jason Scorse, and Jan Black have the most popular pages.
Next Steps: Many faculty profiles need new photos and updated biographies, i.e. What have they been working on lately? Should we create a webform that explains what type of information we’re looking for so that they can update their profile from anywhere in the world?
Course Descriptions
The students mentioned that they read course descriptions to determine whether they can get the real world experience they need from mostly theory-based courses. We could benefit from using the “Course Listing” content type to display courses, like Middlebury currently does for their academic programs (Ex. Arabic)
Next Steps: We’ve created Courses pages for Translation & Interpretation and TESOL/TFL. Work with GSIPM and Careers to develop a better tagging system within Banner so that we can create Courses pages for International Environmental Policy, Conflict Resolution, Development, Trade, etc.
Alumni Profiles & Employment Statistics
The students made it clear that they are interested in both alumni profiles (How did you get your job? stories) and general employment statistics. However, they don’t want to be bombarded by statistics, just read ones that capture overarching trends. A good example might be “90% of MPA graduates surveyed were employed six months after graduation at a starting salary of $60,000.”
Next Steps: Work to tweak our RSS story feeds so that we can more prominently feature alumni stories in Careers and Academics and on the Alumni website. Continue to collect alumni stories for the MIIS Around the World Stories Campaign and Communique online magazine.
Web and Social Media Headlines
New Homepage Videos
Please take 10 minutes to watch them:
- Maha Baimyrzaeva: What will you do at the Casa Fuente Building?
- Jaymee Martin: Language Teachers Change the World
- Marcos Medina: MIIS through the Eyes of a Veteran
- Christa Thoeresz: What path will you walk down as an MBA student?
- TEDxMonterey Returns!
301 Redirect
Thanks to a new 301 Redirect module, we now have the ability to rename links without breaking them. For example, we might want to rename http://www.miis.edu/academics/programs/tfl to http://www.miis.edu/academics/programs/teaching-foreign-language to include keywords in the URL.
Check out the new KB article: How do I create a 301 Redirect?
If there’s anything I missed, please leave your comments below!
