'Frankensite' monsters loom as universities lose control of content

Thank you for this enlightening advertisement. I shall be sure to hire Precedent and Portfolio to advise on the buzz of any website for which I acquire responsibility.

"Leeds Metropolitan University, Sheffield Hallam University and Southampton Solent University were judged to have the most positive "buzz" online." WHile "Oxford is 79th." This tells you everything you need to know, doesn't it. LMU, SMU and Southampton Solent probably need brilliant websites to attract people at clearing. Oxford is brilliant, places and jobs are at a premium and so they don't need to give a toss about their website. Good for them. Stuff all management consultants!

Goodness! where to start? - well, let's look at "branding". Using a heated implement, usually made of iron (in fact, a "branding iron"), a permanent scar is made in the flesh, to clearly denote property rights. In the business world, there is extraordinary faith in the concept of "strong brand" as a chief weapon in the competitive trading environment. The academic, meanwhile, relies on "academic reputation". In recent times in some universities, academics have been asked to subsume their reputation under the brand; indeed, academics relationships with the outside world falls under the authority of marketing, except within their own narrow speciality. Even in the latter case, I have seen academics told to conform to house style when presenting at international conferences!. We see, then, just in this instance, the sort of empire-building that taxpayers should not be subsidising.

Next- mr Rattray and his "He said that a key aim should be to educate staff about the need to build institutions' reputations on the web:" - To the academic, this is simple - do world-class work to the highest possible standard, and turn out world-class graduates. End of story. The idea that an academic's activities should be subsumed under the university's drive for brand-building and the institution's reputation on the web is actually to demand that an academic be something other than academic. The damage to the institution would be incalculable.

And then we have the idea of investing in content management systems... actually, Jumla does it fine, better than some big, clunky and inevitably outdated custom business package. This is just a plea for funding, with the branding excuse used because that's what will push modern manager's buttons.

And now, an example: I know of an academic website that was administered by the academics themselves, back in the old days when they were the only ones who knew how to make a website. It was updated weekly or monthly with publications, preliminary results, downloads, news and interesting material. Then, the university moved in on it in an empire-building putsch. But the new system, that had removed the authority of the academics to update their site, was mired in beauracracy and incomplete systems. Five years later, the site has never been updated. It's useless, no-one visits it, and any reputation that had been garnered has long since evaporated. So much for taking control of brand identity.

What! surely not! You mean they took responsibity for the website away from the superhumans? You mean gulp that they were asked to ONLY FOCUS ON TEACHING AND RESEARCH what a TRAVESTY. Oh how foolish the non-academics ARE thinking that their PUNY BRAINS can handle non-linear THOUGHT..

And finally....it's this kind of thinking - education is just another business with exaclty the same rules of conduct - that could, as in the example above, kill the goose (alright, it's not very golden). It is to fundamentally fail to see this point: the raison d'etre of an academic is to find truth, knowledge, facts - whatever you want to call it. It is by doing this that an academic aspires to be excellent, and it is in encouraging students to do this that provides the whole justification of the academic enterprise. Now, according to most academics I know, if marketing want to get in on the act by inserting themselves into a position of authority over the every utterance of the academic - they will find they have to write every web page, every conference paper, every public utterance themselves. In conclusion, then - this story could come straight out of Poppleton.

Here we go again - Hero, you're on the same empire-bulding bandwagon. Let me ask you - who are these websites for? - who are they talking to? do we seriously assume that the marketing dept are the best people to understand that audience?

I work at Leeds Met and they used to make a lot of this website 'buzz' nonsense (not as much now that Simon Lee is gone). The university also prides itself on achieving second place in some ranking or other of student satisfaction with the library. Higher up than Oxford and Cambridge, no less! You can imagine how ridiculous it is when senior members of staff get up to boast about this when you compare the vast resources of their (and other universities') libaries with ours which dumped hundreds of journals because there wasn't room in the minute space that was re-allocated. And our website, beyond one or two eye-catching sections, is appaling. If you want to find anything on the site, best go via Google.

Don't be ridiculous - academics don't produce good websites - have you not seen the godawful flashy graphic crap that (and here's an excellent example) is frederics sirpeterscott crap. The idea that academics persue (a) truth is sound, but I'm not sure how constructing websites is part of that search for truth. I mean I love that academics on £90 an hour are willing to lower themselves to do a £10 an hour job for most of the day, but its not really what they are there for is it?

I joined my department three years ago and academics were making their own brochures - here's an example:

Real title 'Course handbook' - academic title 'a guide to services and facilities available to student pursuing modules XXXX to XXXX in year one of the BSc Physics acadmic year 2002-03' (i.e. year 1). The brochure was verbose to the point of being a 'waffly old bloke' sketch on the fast show, and students complained that they couldn't get information out. It was black and white and multiple photocopied. Actions needed were implied in the text, but not clearly stated so many weren't done and translations were necessary (eg reading a page of text and then saying 'you have to hand in your work on or before the deadline or you will get penalised') Academics just arenb't good at this in general.

In response to artad's comment, I doubt if any university can afford complacency towards digital marketing; this will only become of increasing importance for student recruitment and surely it is prudent to allocate responsibility where there is the greatest amount of resource / specialist knowledge available.

Marketing departments spend 100% of their time promoting their universities; academic staff may only have 5% of their time to spend on similar activities. Their most important role is to deliver high-quality teaching and research, thus enhancing the student experience, maintaining their university's reputation and generally giving their marketing department lots of positive things to write about!

Before anyone applies to study at a University, or applies for a job, or considers funding or a business partnership, before anybody visits for an open day or a conference or a meeting, before anyone telephones or e-mails, what do they do? They look at the website. Even if it's just to look up someone's e-mail. The website is the principal customer interface, the first chance that you have to impress people who you want to impress. First impressions, as we all know, count. Why then would anyone want to give responsibility for that interface to someone who has little or no training/experience in such matters and is already very busy with a full-time job of their own?

As partway proven by Mr Quixote's response in essay form to this article, academics too often exist to criticise rather than create.

Whilst most universities have straightforward websites where it is easy to find things out Sheffield Hallam and Leeds Met both have highly confusing websites with big gaps in information. Sheffield Hallam does not even have an experts directory. The issue here is that many university marketing managers assume that you can promote a university the way you promote commercial brands. Either they have come from commercial companies or they seek to emulate the way that commercial firms do things. What they attempt to do is a bit like promoting a science park but neglecting to promote all the companies inside it. Marketing departments could spend their time supporting, encouraging and enabling individual academics to use a variety of low cost tools such as websites, blogs, online video and e-mail bulletins to promote their work to their own niche audiences. Instead what marketing departments often do is go for the easy option of dreaming up expensive generic campaigns which they hope will promote the university as a whole. Successful universities like successful science parks are built by hundreds of individuals making their mark in their own fields.

How most of these comments completely miss the point. Academics by their nature are generally experts in an area. However for most academics that area is not website design or copywriting. When done correctly, web design and copywriting are highly skilled areas; they are not activities people can just dabble in and do well. The website only exists to serve its users. It should enable them to find the information they seek in the easiest, most palatable and most efficient way possible. A poor website is infuriating to use and most universities audiences are web savvy. The article is completely accurate and university websites are dreadful for the reasons outlined.

Surely it is logical and desirable (whether you are Oxford or not) to have your website performing as well as it can. If academics work in a university which has a skilled web/marketing team then they should consider themselves fortunate - even if it means relinquishing some control over content. Maybe, just maybe, someone actually knows better than they do. As well as resulting in a high quality website benefitting the university and its audiences, it frees up academic time to "turn out world-class graduates." Oh and Don Quixote, you may find that good website design has moved on a touch since back in the good old days.

Take a look at www.bibledex.com for an example of an excellent project that most university marketing departments would never come up with.

That Bibledex site is rather obviously not part of the University of Nottingham website and therefore not strictly relevant to the discussion. When people create external sites for specific projects, itbranding is much less important. In fact, it's helpful to site visitors if they look completely different to the actual .ac.uk site. By the by, I also don't see any evidence that Nottingham's Marketing & Comms people *weren't* involved in the Bibledex project.

Hi there,

I'm behind the www.bibledex.com site mentioned above.

I also run www.periodicvideos.com (chemistry) www.sixtysymbols.com (physics) and www.test-tube.org.uk (science in general) - all joint projects with the University of Nottingham.

It's probably not really my place to enter this debate (and maybe these sorts of projects aren't what is being discussed)...

But I will say the sites have garnered over 12 million video views and counting. We're having a great time doing them and reaching audiences we never imagined.

The university's given plenty of encouragement to these "side projects" without trying to control them creatively. As a result, the knowledge and ability of its academics have been showcased in ways we never imagined.

A few of the professors even find themselves being recognised in airports and foreign countries!

"Hey, are you the guy who does those chemistry videos on YouTube!"

Brady

This is good. We're at cross purposes a little - there's an unspoken assumption that the purpose of a website is to sell. Since a decent academic should never, ever, ever listen to sales bumf - then waht would all this branding be for? Jaykay - I simultaneously agree and disagree with you. yes website design has moved on (thank goodness - if you remember the crap that IBM and Microsoft were coming up with in the 90s!) - and yes, I agree that a rubbish website is annoying, and yes - quickest and best route to the desired information is really the main reason for a website. But... have you not looked at the vast majority of professional designs? Things are improving from the dark days of 2000-2001, but there's an awful long way to go. The main "step change" improvement would be the simple undertaking to not talk crap. Only tell the truth. The idea that the website's purpose is to disseminate an unalloyed diet of sugary "good news" stories... It's like TV adverts - no-one actually believes them, obviously. Especially in the case of universities, we want critical, skeptical, analytical thinkers - just the sort that are unreachable through sugary, flattering and meaningless waffle of the sort that many (not all) corporate thinkers think will be fine. So look, let's get down to it - what are these sites actually for?

Hero - I have to agree with you about "godawful flashy graphic crap"... but this £90 per hour business; can you let me have more details? ( Oh, and I wouldn't palm an important job off on a £10 per hour person either)

Oh, I just saw Joanne A's response. 1) I hope you don't really think that's essay length!, 2) I agree that criticism without creation is unbalanced - but what is creation without criticism? - you're not really arguing with the legitimate substance of my arguments - you haven't actually produced a decent argument, so "partway proven" isn't quite right. And.. Caroline "...lots of positive things to write about" - that's exactly what I'm arguing over.

All this talk about design demonstrates one of the fundamental problems on the web, which is that far too many people think the key to a good website is design. It's not. It's content. A site visitor doesn't really care what your site looks like as long as they can find the specific thing that they are looking for quickly and easily. //////////////// One of the main purposes of a University website is indeed to sell. We all want to get the best students (and lots of nice, paying overseas students) so we're in competition and trying to make ourselves look good (though we must all be aware that any spin to disguise faults will be quickly discovered and disseminated through TSR, Facebook etc). A good website will not necessarily bring in good students but a bad site will sure as heck scare them off, on the principal that if a uni can't even do something as simple as manage a website, what else might they fail at?

I could not agree more that content is all important. When I referred to website design I was not referring to how pretty it appears. I meant enabling people to find the content they want, presented in an easily digestable way. This also means no sugary marketing waffle or laboured academic waffle.