A CHIEF ENROLLMENT OFFICER THAT SLEEPS AT NIGHT—A WEBSITE THAT WORKS



Philip G. Guth, Judson University, Elgin IL



ABSTRACT

Today’s student prospects have a myriad of communication options available to them. Where the telephone and mail strategies seemed to work in the past, that’s not always true anymore; the website seems to be the most effective place to get the message out to prospects. With that comes the need for our institutions to practice strong knowledge management as it relates to organizing content. Organizing the success stories of our respective learning communities is very important to a successful recruitment process. This paper seeks to provide overview information to its reader on Content Management Systems, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) news feeds, and Taxonomies.

SUMMARY

Almost 20 years ago the recruitment process had some key differences from today's environment. It used to be that:

The student prospect has so many communication channels available to them. And, because of that, one would expect that it is easier to contact them--but, in fact, that doesn't seem to be the case.

It seems that the only medium that provides a common platform for communicating with prospects and their parents is the "web". There is plenty to keep an enrollment person "awake at night", but some of them might be "how many prospects come to our website but leave without finding the information they needed?"; What if we (the higher education institution) indeed had what they needed, but they just didn't find it?; What if they were unhappy with the way things were organized, left unhappy, but never told us?

So the market has changed and Higher Ed. Institutions can’t really sit around and wait for students to come through the door. Judson doesn’t have all the answers, and in fact we’re very open about the fact that we’re still learning and plan to keep learning. As part of the learning process, we’ve added the following features to our website in order to meet the changing needs of our various constituents:


CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Websites—Some Context

It used to be that a web server (physical hardware and software) had the role of serving out html, gif, and jpeg file formats. Saying it another way, typically the web server would “serve” out static web pages that had a few images in them. Because early websites were relatively technical, it was common for the the web server software and hardware to be managed by the “technical services” area of a given institution. The support person for the web server environment was often called a “web master”, which over time seemed to evolve into a position called a “web project manager”. This arrangement required a “centralized” management system because the software, hardware and staff member worked from the “technical services” role of the institution.

The centralized model had some strong attributes, including the ability for one person to manage the “look and feel” of the website—providing the end user with consistent navigation and visuals. In addition, because the webmaster and the server were in the “technical services” area there was a perception of greater security, along with easier maintenance. This era was long before the onset of “remote desktop” and “virtual server” environments and consequently the people managing the servers were usually close (in terms of physical location) to the hardware they managed.

There were some downsides to this arrangement also. Often times efficient website changes were made more difficult because the webmaster model served as a “choke point”. If the webmaster role could not keep up with the change requests, trouble would ensue. In addition, because the web master was hired by “technical” people to do “technical” work, they were generally not masters of “graphic design” or “information architecture”.

And then there was the “telephone game” effect with the inevitable communication breakdown from the “sponsor” (the person who has the most knowledge about the information that needed to be updated) and the webmaster. This extra layer of communication allowed extra “noise” to enter the message, otherwise known as inaccuracies; yet another potential cause for an enrollment manager’s lack of sleep.

Website Management—The Three Tier Model

Implementing a website in the mid 90’s involved some technical skill, but it still didn’t have the complexity of today’s modern websites. An effective website is intensely strategic and has multiple update layers. At the core of this effort to make a more functional website is the Content Management System (CMS).

A Content Management System (CMS) is generally defined as a piece of software that allows for the adding and editing of content. While this content can be represented within the file folder structure of the web server, the content itself is stored inside a database. Each individual piece of content is often referred to as a “content block” or “content item”.

A CMS provides multiple update layers allowing employees or vendors to maintain the particular facet of the website that they are most qualified to support. There are three primary groups that support a CMS driven website; developer/strategists, administrators, and content contributors.

Figure 1—CMS Groups and their functions, The Three Tier Model

The CMS model, along with new remote management technologies, has allowed the entire website management process to be more decentralized. The developers and strategists, who sometimes are hired from outside the organization, can contribute much of their function without being local. The website administrator, who often is an employee of the organization, has the role of empowering the content contributors by giving them access to their respective content areas. The content contributor, the individual who many times has the most tacit knowledge about their area, is no longer hampered by extra layers of communication (telephone game effect).

CMS—A New Infrastructure for Sharing a Learning Community

Parents and students increasingly view “higher education” as just another purchase, when searching for a college or university to attend. This perception from parents is likely fostered by “Consumer Reports” type rankings provided by “U.S. News and World Report” and countless articles from the mainstream press that share with parents the best ways to negotiate the “cost of attendance” at our institutions. Unfortunately, enrollment and financial aid folks begin to be viewed as the “deal makers” that are responsible for filling the classrooms.

Having said that, most would probably agree that the market we serve is changing and will continue to change; arguably at a faster pace than in previous years. The rub comes in that “higher education” is not generally known for “quick reaction” time. In the spirit of “Total Quality Management” (TQM), it is the author’s belief that the “system” (as opposed to a people problem), needs improvement. A CMS can provide the infrastructure necessary to improve the “system” by allowing the “content contributors” (i.e. faculty) to post information that communicates that significant learning is happening. This could come from the faculty member as an entry in their blog or through a “wiki space” that the faculty member uses to facilitate group learning activities. So while the old way of doing things required a “web master” to change content, the CMS provides each content contributor access to create content, either through a web based interface, or in some cases, an application that resides on the local machine.

While the CMS is a wonderful tool to communicate the institution’s distinctives and image, it has the potential to showcase actual learning. So marketers can view this as a wonderful tool to communicate “brand image” and the academy can look at it as a way to share outcomes of a “learning community” (read: everyone’s reasonably happy).

THE TAXONOMY

The Website Provides the First Impression

The Admissions Office is no longer the single source for all answers. Increasingly, potential students (and their parents) are getting answers without ever making a face to face contact. This has the potential to be a good thing; especially if our websites are able to answer the questions our visitors are asking. It is easy to be haunted by the idea of a visitor who enters the site and doesn’t find the program they desire; or it could be that they just don’t like your website. In either case the student (or parent) is making a very quick decision on whether they investigate further or just move on to the next option in their list of Google results. Not everyone is going to like your website, but organizing information in a way that helps people find what they’re looking for, seems to be a reasonable goal. Sometimes you will hear the term “information architecture” or “taxonomy” to describe the process of organizing website information. So while the CMS provides us with a database for our content blocks (i.e. mission statement, course descriptions, etc.) and an interface for editing the content, it’s not organized in a way that would make sense to a website visitor.

Descriptive Meta Tags—The Beginning of Web Content Organization

The information that is used to describe a particular entity—in our case, a piece of content in the CMS, is generally based on the Dublin Core standard. The creation of the Dublin Core was driven by a desire to create descriptive standards and practices for electronic resources; specifically to aid in the information retrieval process. This descriptive information is often referred to as Meta tags. Meta means “above and beyond”, as in the word “metaphysics”. In this case, the Meta tags are modifiers of the subject in question, quite literally it can be viewed as “data about data”. To be more specific, the Dublin Core could be more generally described as a standard for “descriptive” Meta tags.

The “web 2.0” craze has made us aware of the concept of tagging—allowing the user to add “descriptive” Meta tags to a photo for example or adding labels/categories to the email in your inbox. This process of tagging allows the user to enjoy the benefits of easier information retrieval; no longer being hampered by the “rigidity” of a file folder structure. The user is able to create any tag that makes sense to them and then use that Meta tag to retrieve all pieces of content that have been assigned that particular tag. In other words, that tag acts as a pointer to that piece of content, in addition to all other content that has that same tag attached to it. And since that “content” can have multiple tags it is a little bit like filing that content in multiple folders; maybe you could call them virtual folders.

Taxonomy—Structural Meta Tags

The word taxonomy is likely not new to you. You might have heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains or remember that Biologists use the term in the classification of plants and animals. These classification systems use an outline or hierarchical structure. For example: Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species are the categories used by scientists to classify living organisms. If you know the species, because of its placement in the hierarchy, you know about all of the categories above it. If I qualify as a homo sapien, then I know that I’m in the animal kingdom, because the taxonomy is defined.

Whereas “descriptive” Meta tags are used to describe the content in the CMS, the keywords that define a taxonomy are considered “structural” Meta tags. This type of Meta tag defines the relationship of the piece of content within the broader information architecture of the site. These structural Meta tags provide both “information retrieval” and content management capabilities. In the higher education world, for example, you may want a taxonomy that looks like figure 2.

Figure 2--Higher Education Taxonomy Example

Once you have your taxonomy defined, and in fact most likely you will define multiple taxonomies, you have provided yourself with “site navigation”. In this scenario, as content contributors add pertinent content and then assign the applicable structural Meta tags, the content is automatically attached to the appropriate areas of the site. For example, if the marketing department authors a press release about a Judson student that majors in Architecture and plays on the volleyball team, then it would be marked with a “School of Art, Design, and Architecture” and “volleyball” tags. The content would automatically show for both sites.

RSS NEWS FEED

The Push vs. Pull Continuum

When messaging is talked about, sometimes the messaging delivery method (i.e. phone, website, magazine, etc.) is assigned a location on a “push vs. pull” continuum. For instance, a website is generally considered a “pull” strategy because the site has to be good enough to draw readers to itself. A website doesn’t demand immediate attention and so the user can get the message at their convenience.

Figure 3--Push vs. Pull Gradient (Lenssen, 2007)

Since young student prospects are using more communication methods than in the past, effective and consistent communication with prospective students is somewhat more challenging. Many students have a mobile phone, but prefer to use it for text messaging (SMS); some have an email address while others think that email is for ‘old’ people. In addition, Facebook and MySpace are providing yet another way for students to communicate (Olson, 2007). It seems prudent from a strategy perspective, to require some messaging that represents different areas of the “push/pull” continuum. Placing too much dependence on any single method comes with too much risk.

In the middle of the “Push vs. Pull Gradient” (figure 2) there is a reference to a “feed reader” (also known as an aggregator). A feed reader is an application that allows a user to subscribe to RSS newsfeeds. The feed reader application can exist on its own (e.g. Feed Demon), but can also be found as a function of the web browser (e.g. IE 7) or the email client (e.g. Outlook 2007). Google, for example, has a web based reader aptly named the Google News Reader. Generally web based readers can only be used when you’re online, but Google has overcome that problem with a technology they call “gears”, which allows for offline reading of your favorite newsfeeds.

The RSS newsfeed is often times provided as a feature within the CMS. Many of these CMS driven websites have their RSS newsfeed subscription link showing near the top of a given web page and usually represented by a small orange icon as seen in figure 3 (Mozilla, 2006). The website user is able to find the content area of a website that interests them and then subscribe to the newsfeed by clicking on “RSS newsfeed icon”. Clicking on the icon reveals the RSS address (in the browser URL field) that you will need to enter into your feed reader. Once the entry is made in the feed reader, the user will see any new content information that is entered into the CMS by the content contributors of your website.

Figure 4--RSS Newsfeed Icon--originally developed by Mozilla Firefox

As students and their parents are in the “college search” phase of life, it could be reasonably expected that they will be visiting our websites. However, with the vast number of compelling websites that provide good information, it is somewhat unreasonable for us to expect prospects to keep returning to our websites without some initiative on our part. Providing visitors with a way to subscribe to the content they are interested in, helps foster a relationship. Even if this type of service doesn’t provide the tipping point for the student to make a choice for our respective institution, it still may provide information that aids the student in making a good college choice; one that best meets their needs.

CONCLUSION

While all of these technologies are interesting to watch and a challenge, at times, to implement in a way that provides “service” to the learning community, it is important to note that none of these will solve all of our recruitment challenges. Rather, they may provide a “rebalancing” of our portfolio of tools that let prospective students know what is being accomplished in our respective learning communities. While it is true that there is a lot of “it used to be” thinking which often impedes progress in higher education, the potential for moving to a “how it can be” mindset is exciting to think about. These tools have the potential to provide a framework for knowledge transfer that aids the academic mission of our institutions, satisfy the growing public outcry for accountability in the face of rising tuition costs, and, if I can be selfish for just a moment, provide a wonderful vehicle to communicate the positive message of all that is Judson University.

Works Cited

Garvin, D. A. (1998). Building a Learning Organization. Boston MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Lenssen, P. (2007, June 27). The Push vs. Pull Gradient. Retrieved July 3, 2007, from Google Blogoscoped: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-06-29-n63.html

Mozilla. (2006, August 1). Feed Icon Guidelines. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from Mozilla.org: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/feed-icon-guidelines/

Olson, S. (2007, July 18). Kids say email, is like, soooo dead. Retrieved July 19, 2007, from CNET News.com: http://news.com.com/2009-1032_3-6197242.html?part=rss