Brian’s blogged about this interesting survey from Times Higher. I’m on holiday at the moment, but wanted to do a quick “reblog” as WordPress calls it. Might blog more about how the Aber Uni website is doing in relation to the points the students make when I’m back at work.
This week’s issue of the Times Higher Education contains a six page article on “Deciphering the code” which asks “do universities’ websites tell prospective students what they need to know” and invites a panel of sixth-formers to identify the top University Web sites – and those which can be improved. What were the best performing institutional Web sites? The top ten sites are listed in the following table – and although I an aware that the metho … Read More
via UK Web Focus
Like this:
Like Loading...
About Suzy
Web Development Assistant at Aberystwyth University
Alan
Suzy
One of the points made is:
Would be interesting to know whether sites with negative comments actually affect opinions of the university. I would hypothesise that although students claim they want to see negative views that it could reduce their opinion of the university if there were negative comments.
Essentially, what people say they want and what makes them prefer one university over another may well be different and so the results may need taking with more than a pinch of salt.
( Interesting link on this subject: http://uxmyths.com/post/746610684/myth-21-people-can-tell-you-what-they-want )
Negative comments can sometime reinforce positive ones and make the positive ones seem more real. If there were 100 positive comments it looks (and probably has been) skewed by the web authors to portray a positive image only. 100 comments were 4 or 5 are negative only serves to make the majority positive ones seem more authentic.
Added to that, the fact is that there are sites out there where students can freely comment on their institution like http://www.whatuni.com so the information is already out there.
By bringing it in house at least you have a degree of control over what is said.
Guess it comes down to constructing a system that promotes student to give an honest review.