For years, most Web teams have designed for the desktop. Mobile, if it even happened, was a port off the desktop version, designed and built before anyone even considered the mobile experience. This made perfect sense for a while. Browsing the Web on mobile phones was painful; carriers controlled access to the Web on their devices; and mobile network speeds made everything often grind to a halt.
But things have changed so dramatically over the past few years that starting with the desktop may be an increasingly backwards way of thinking about a Web product. Designing for mobile first can not only open up new opportunities for growth, it can lead to a better overall user experience for a Web site or application.
In this presentation, Luke Wroblewski will dig into the three key reasons to consider mobile first: mobile is seeing explosive growth; mobile forces you to focus; and mobile extends your capabilities.
Do you need to display formulas on your web site? Are you dealing with Arabic, Cyrillic, or other alphabets where translation to the Web can be difficult? Come to this session to learn a few tools and techniques for displaying this content on the web, while at the same time ensuring your design meets accessibility standards.
Experience Level: Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: Familiarity with a foreign language or math notation. The ability to add 2+2, at least most of the time. Skills/Knowledge Gained: Understanding of language tagging, benefits of basic Unicode, use of LaTEX in Drupal, and optimal equation formats for accessibility.
One of the biggest buzz phrases of 2011 has been “responsive web design,” an emerging practice centered around creating designs that “anticipate and respond to users’ needs.” With the surge in mobile and tablet devices, this approach has a lot of value. But what about the substance that those designs support: the content. This prompts two questions: one, what adjustments should we make for our content in a responsive design world, and two, what does (or should) “responsive content” mean? In this presentation, I will discuss some of the answers to these questions, including content for the mobile and location-sensitive web, the print-web dichotomy, and how content responds across the life cycle of our higher ed audience. Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge: An understanding of the basic definition of responsive design Basic understanding of content creation and maintenance practices
Skills/Knowledge Gained: Understanding of how to shape content in a responsive design context Understanding of possible interpretations of "responsive content" and how to apply them.
When you work with social media, you hear a lot of talk about measurement. How do we measure our efforts? Which efforts do we measure? Which things can we assign numbers to? What do the numbers mean? What action do we take as a result of the numbers? In some cases, numbers present themselves to us in a pretty little package like Facebook Insights. Sometimes, numbers exist without an obvious value. What does a Klout score really mean in the grand scheme of things? And then there are things that have no number assigned to them at all. After all, how is good customer service reflected in percentages or stats? At the most basic level, the quest for social media measurement should be about finding data to inform our work and help us build better online communities. This idea of "measurement" is something that should be employed from the get-go. We cannot wait to measure or evaluate our social media business until after it's been conducted. In my presentation, I’ll explore ways data can inform a social media strategy: setting goals, choosing social media channels, messaging and communication, evaluation, and adaptation.
Experience Level:
Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
Some working knowledge of social media channels (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) will be helpful. I will assume that attendees already know the difference between a Facebook Page and a Profile, the difference between a mention and re-tweet on Twitter, etc.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
After attending this presentation, the audience should be able to use data to make better decisions about social media strategy: setting goals, choosing social media channels, messaging and communication, evaluation, and adaptation. Whether just getting started or already in the midst of an online communication plan, it's always important to be informed and strategic.
Creating a separate mobile website is a great idea until someone changes a data source on you. Your users don’t care if your LDAP is down or why they can’t pull up next the class schedule for next semester. In this session you will learn how to plan for the worst; network outages, slow response times and unorganized data. The mobile Web isn’t very useful without content and often that content is gathered from many sources that are out of the developers control. Gathering, protecting and organizing that data is the job of a smart developer and a successful mobile Web presence. This is accomplished by adding an API layer to everything you do. This session will walk you through the ins and outs of creating and maintaining a Web API that can extend far beyond your mobile presence.
Experience Level:
Advanced - Assumes a solid grasp of topic and extensive experience.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
Being familiar with RESTful API’s
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
The ins and outs of creating and maintaining a Web API that can extend far beyond their mobile presence.
SVG or Scalable Vector Graphics is an XML specification that defines vector graphics for the web. It has been in existence for over ten years, but with the release of Internet Explorer 9, and the increased interest in responsive web design, SVG has come of age! Responsive Web Design utilizes fluid containers, and therefore requires resizable content and images. As the name suggests, SVG images are scalable, and can increase or decrease in size as a browser is resized, without losing resolution. Although inconsistencies remain across browsers when displaying some SVG elements, this should improve in the future. Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge: Familiarity with Adobe Illustrator will be helpful, but not required. Also, basic knowledge of HTML and CSS and/or HTML5 and CSS3. Skills/Knowledge Gained: This workshop will provide a brief history and overview of SVG, a comparison of SVG Editors, and participants will have the opportunity to create a simple scalable graphic and incorporate it into a web page. Attendees should bring a laptop to this session in order to participate in the hands-on portion of the talk.
Going from a point and click desktop interface to a mobile touch interface dramatically effects how consumers interact with applications and web sites. Much has been written recently about Apple's human interface guidelines but what do Google, BlackBerry and Microsoft have to say about designing for their mobile operating systems? In this presentation you will be introduced to the world of human interface guidelines for mobile devices. What can we learn by comparing and contrasting the guidelines of these three mobile players and how can we incorporate it into our apps and websites? What are the main differences in developing for these platforms and what do user experience designers need to take into account before starting a project? Should you focus on building an app or make your website mobile friendly instead?
Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
Basic understanding of web design and user experience as well as familiarity with the mobile app marketplace.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Understanding how design patterns differ across different mobile platforms and how to change and tweak your site or apps to adapt to the various platforms.
Usability has come a long way since the dark days before "Designing with Web Standards". Now nearly all companies see the value of UX in their digital designs. But despite heightened focus on the user and a growing awareness of accessibility concerns, implementation of accessibility standards have often fallen victim to time pressures and obsolete design practices. Disabled users struggle through sites missing alt tags, keyboard inputs or text alternatives. Enter devices like the iPhone & Android … and the iPad. With the proliferation of non-desktop devices and browsers like tablets and gestural smartphones, suddenly more people are finding that the web isn't as nice and clean as they remembered: broken formatting, too small text, hover functionality that doesn’t work, and entire swaths of the web rendered as Flash-based wastelands that millions can’t access. We've now discovered that by solving for many of the issues that iOS and other mobile users face, we can also solve for the most prevalent accessibility issues. Using side-by-side examples and case studies, I'll show how we can make sites more accessible and more usable by mobile devices. Through combinations of better markup, HTML5 and CSS3 functionality and better scripting, we can serve two masters at once. Better yet, in some cases, we can take advantage of the accessibility capabilities built into newer mobile devices to make the digital experience even better than they would get on the 'old web'.
Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge: Basic knowledge of accessibility, HTML and CSS preferable; some knowledge of the mobile design space would be beneficial. Skills/Knowledge Gained: 1. How do the needs of accessibility intersect with the needs of mobile users (particularly iOS)? 2. What can we do in the markup to address the needs of both? 3. How can I use media queries to selectively address the needs? 4. How can I improve my non-mobile sites to be more accessible? 5. How can we take advantage of the inherent accessibility functionality within mobile devices to enhance the experience.
This presentation will discuss expanding your web content from written words to images, audio, and video. Jamie Oberdick will discuss how he went from being a writer to something he never envisioned himself becoming just five years ago - a multimedia producer. This will include the tools he uses from audio recorders to smartphones to software like GarageBand and iMovie, the resources he tapped to learn his multimedia skills such as University-provided training sessions and online tutorials, how he gets ideas for multimedia such as podcasts, and why multimedia content is important in today's higher ed world. Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge:
Some experience producing written web content. Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Learn how to expand your skills from producing written words to producing multimedia for your website (it's really not as hard as it seems).
Storytelling boils down to meaningful and engaging communication, which makes effective storytelling an essential function for the success of any organization -- including higher education, which happens to be a particularly ripe environment for storytelling. In this session, Cohen will talk about what the components of a story, what makes stories such a powerful means of communication, how storytelling supports institutional goals and how we should evaluate our roles in higher ed web marketing from a storytelling context. I will discuss the need for clear messaging, thoughtful narratives -- be they in code or prose -- an audience-centric approach and the community’s investment in the story being told.Skills/Knowledge Gained: Attendees at this presentation will examine some of the bold, unique, engagement marketing happening in the higher ed realm and (hopefully) be inspired to take a look at their own efforts in a new way.
Nikki Massaro Kauffman and Alice Shapiro want to give you some new jQuery toys--and it's not even your birthday! In this session, we'll show you the jQuery features we've implemented into the World Campus course CMS, let you play with them, and then let you have the code. Our toybox for this session will include: - interactive, click-to-show content, - table-to-graph tools, - font resizing, - an expandable content window, - a simple slideplayer, - a glossary tool, - an image watermarking, - clickable thumbnails, - clickable captions, and - automatic anchor and back-to-top navigation. Spend a session playing with us; we promise we'll share! Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge: Knowledge of CSS and jQuery. Skills/Knowledge Gained: Attendees will leave this presentation with actually jQuery scripts that they can modify and integrate into their content management systems.
Join us for an update on Penn State's Accessible Information Technology Initiative. This work is gaining a lot of traction and making quick progress. We'll talk about Hi Software, our new accessibility scanning software, the Triage approach to website remediation, and the many resources and trainings that are available to the Penn State web community. Who said web accessibility was hard? Bring your questions and comments and join the conversation.
The purpose of web content is communication. But how do you ensure content being created and published across campus by numerous contributors and delivery methods supports your institution's communication goals? How do you know all that content is telling a consistent story about your brand? How you ensure content educates and informs rather than confuses or misleads? Your editorial style guide is the "how-to" of content strategy, enabling clear communication. An editorial style guide for the web helps content contributors create useful, usable, findable, on-brand content at your institution — it's much more than a list of preferred spellings and grammar usage. It can provide guidance and instruction for using content to communicate, including brand messaging, voice and tone, web writing, SEO and findability, social media, and visual communication. In this session learn the elements of editorial style for the web and how they can be used to align content creation with established communication goals. Don't just create content. Communicate, clearly. Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge: This session is intended for anyone who interacts with web content in their professional role. A basic understanding of web publishing is needed to take full advantage of this presentation.
Skills/Knowledge Gained: An understanding of the various elements of editorial style for the web. - How to develop and document communication goals for content contributors. - How to align content creation with communication goals, including identifying appropriate content types and delivery methods. - How to ensure consistent voice, tone, and brand messaging across content delivery channels and among diverse contributors. - Steps toward creating a working editorial style guide at your institution.
Harnessing the eagerness of current students can produce amazing results. If you have campus tour guides, you know this already. Why limit student’s connectivity to campus visitors? Some call them “online ambassadors” but we call them “bloggers on steroids.” In this presentation you will learn why you should expand your institution’s blogger presence across social networking platforms including: YouTube, Twitter, Formspring, Facebook, and more. You’ll also walk away with ideas on integrating their efforts across campus and we will share our best advice on how to manage these students. Experience Level: Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: An understanding of social media and an interest in enrollment marketing. Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Attendees of this presentation will learn how to ramp up student ambassador programs by putting social media tools to work in order to meet enrollment goals.
This session will explore the World Campus approach to streaming video delivery on mobile device platforms such as iOS and Android. As more and more content is delivered to mobile devices, we need to develop strategies that ensure we are delivering a high quality product from a robust production environment. A brief presentation will take a look at the streaming environment we have developed based on the Flash Media Server platform including some insight into some of the choices we have made in its implementation and the processes we have developed to deliver high quality video to a range of devices, including mobile. The presentation will feature an overview of our development and delivery environment as well as our reasoning behind our mobile strategy. A demonstration of our encoding and delivery process will follow, featuring techniques that the audience can take away and implement immediately. We will wrap up with an audience discussion about the future of mobile streaming video in higher education and potential opportunities for collaboration and expertise sharing around the university.
Experience Level:
Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
Interest in Video Support on Mobile Devices.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Audience will take away code for progressive mobile html5 iOS fallback video delivery (with Google Analytics for video usage tracking), as well as knowledge about strategies to consider when planning for mobile video support in Higher Education.
Come and learn about CoffeeScript, a little language that compiles into JavaScript while allowing you to write better, cleaner, and more importantly, less client code to power your web sites. There is no doubt that JavaScript is king on the web and that frameworks (like jQuery and YUI) have taken the language to new levels. But how about language that takes JavaScript’s good parts, cleans up the syntax a little bit, adds lexical scope to variables (which prevents accidental pollution of the global namespace), makes function binding easier, and seamlessly integrates with existing JavaScript libraries? Meet CoffeeScript, an open source language that has been around for 2+ years and provides these features. This session is an introduction to CoffeeScript, the main features of the language, how is different from JavaScript, why is important to web developers, and how you can integrate it in your web site today. Experience Level: Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge:
Web development and JavaScript. Skills/Knowledge Gained: Why is CoffeScript relevant today, main features of the language, and how to get started.
The web community is diving into responsive web design with reckless abandon. And though our intentions are good, our users may be suffering from our lack foresight. The sites we're building may look great on a smart-phone, but the megabytes of data we require them to download is resulting in less than stellar experiences. As developers, we need to take it upon ourselves to provide our users with a performant experience while at the same time providing access to all of the content and information they would expect while on a larger-screen device. This session will discuss the wide variety of issues a developer should consider while building a responsive site, including lessons learned while building the latest Notre Dame (nd.edu) homepage.
Experience Level:
Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
Familiarity with variety of web development technologies including CSS media queries, javascript and server-side languages.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Attendees will leave with an understanding of RESS techniques and best practices when creating a responsive site.
One of the universal truths in the world of software and web development is that the less bugs in a system the more money is saved and more human resources can be applied to new development that adds value. The best way to reach the goal is to avoid the bugs in the first place – which typically requires testing the system regularly during the software development lifecycle. When it comes to accessibility testing it is often the case that testing is not performed on systems until after the system has been released to users. In such a scenario, an organization’s level of risk is at its highest, as people are using the system. Therefore the organization and its developers require sufficiently informative data output from the accessibility testing which is detailed, clear, and actionable. It doesn’t do the system’s owner any good to deliver a report filled with a bunch of accessibility violations unless that report also includes information to help them fix their problems. They need to know what their problems are, where their problems are, and how to fix them. There’s also an additional item they need to know: When to fix them. Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: Basic knowledge of web accessibility would be beneficial but not required. Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Attendees will come to understand the various concerns when determining how to manage the remediation of accessibility problems in websites and web-based applications to avoid unnecessary strain on budgets and resources while providing high positive impact for users with disabilities.
How do you make sense of and promote faculty research if you have no background in their subject area, let alone an advanced degree? How can you work with difficult faculty personalities, from the complete technophobe to the extreme early adopter? This session will draw from Amanda’s experience as a web designer and content strategist at the University of Minnesota, one of the country’s largest research institutions. Learn how to channel your faculty’s expertise into great web content, and build their trust in your knowledge and skills. Bring your questions, triumphs, and war stories! Experience Level: Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: Though faculty and faculty/higher education issues are focused on, the session will be helpful to anyone who works with people and the web. Skills/Knowledge Gained: Identifying different faculty personalities. Strategies to build trust and communication with faculty. Demonstrating the value of the web to faculty members. Levels of faculty involvement in regards to web strategy, content, design.
Penn State’s most visible and trafficked site is undergoing a major relaunch. A panel from the Polaris project will discuss the iterative approach to the redesign and launch of the new psu.edu http://psu.edu/ web presence. This session will highlight the future of the Penn State web as a University-wide team works to showcase Penn State’s brand strengths and raise the University’s academic and research profile.
With current mobile technologies consumers can now capture high quality digital images with just a few finger swipes and clicks. This session will explore current digital photography trends using mobile devices and address how Apps can be used to capture, transfer, and store images. Uses of Adobe Cloud will also be discussed as a means for digital image file transfer and storage.
Experience Level:
Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
Basic knowledge of photography and image file transfer.
Skills/Knowledge Gained: ·
Explore how to capture High Dynamic Range (HDR) images with an iOS device · Examine Adobe Cloud’s file sharing features using an iOS device · Review various current photography Apps for iOS devices.
With recent advancements in open source mapping software it's never been easier to create informative, interactive, and attractive maps for your Web site. In this session we'll create maps that combine Open Data from public geographic data sources with local data sources. We'll then take these maps and layer them over a public map service using a custom tile server, creating an interactive map widget suitable for placement on your Web site.
Experience Level:
Advanced - Assumes a solid grasp of topic and extensive experience.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
Requires understanding of Web technologies and programming and familiarity with XML. Python programming experience is a plus. Requires no previous experience with mapping technologies.
You have an accessibility policy in place. Your university has training and checklists to guide web developers, designers, editors and quality assurance testers. How do you know if you are making progress? How do you keep yourself and your colleagues motivated to make and maintain an accessible web? Glenda Sims will share gems from her 10+ years of experience as the accessibility goddess of the University of Texas at Austin, as well as insight she has gained from working with Fortune 500 companies as a consultant. Equip yourself with her DIY techniques for creating an accessible culture on your campus that includes an accessible web design process, competitions, leader boards, open campus reporting and rewards that light the accessibility fire within. Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge: This class will be most helpful to people who are already aware of web accessibility concepts. However, it can still be useful to people who are quite new to accessibility. Skills/Knowledge Gained: How to determine if you have all the foundational ingredients for a culture of accessibility. How to set priorities that are motivating, achievable and intrinsically satisfying. The accessible web design process. How to design a leader board and share it internally with your campus web makers. How to reward significant progress in accessibility.
Having a comprehensive mobile strategy is great but your users aren’t waiting around till you have have a pixel perfect solution. Your users are on their mobile devices right now waiting to access your content, having something up is better than nothing. This talk is a look at creating a practical, agile and ever evolving mobile Web presence. A mobile presence can be created on a small budget and without a lot of time. An introduction to the tools, frameworks and testing strategies needed to get a mobile website up quickly and moving in a more useful and usable direction each day.
Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
The creation of websites.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
How to organize and prioritize content for mobile consumption. An idea of the frameworks and testing strategies used to maintain a successful mobile presence on a limited budget.
With mobile devices embracing HTML 5 instead of say flash, it will be more important to start using HTML 5 sooner than later. Learn what you can do with it. Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: HTML
Skills/Knowledge Gained: Using HTML 5 today
The web is evolving. Your content needs to evolve with it. We all need to deliver better information. Intelligent content enables this. Intelligent content allows for more detailed and more accurate analytics. We'll share tools and resources to help make your existing content intelligent, create intelligent content from scratch, and migrate and parse large amounts of content with some automation. Intelligent content enables more reuse, more flexibility for distribution to multiple environments and devices, and consistency across mediums.
Experience Level:
Intermediate -Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
Helpful to have experience with managing content in any environment.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Attendees will leave the workshop with an understanding of what intelligent content is, and how they can both create it and convert their old content into intelligent content. They will leave with a list of tools, resources and examples to help them along the way.
Mobile devices have opened a new world to the content developer and programmer. Should you use HTML5 or a native app? What screen size do you plan for? Which OS will win out? These are all questions that vex an application developer as they consider how best to create a project. During this session, we will give an overview of the questions and the answers that the Adobe Web Premium tools offer. Whether you want to deliver an app-like experience in the browser or you want to create a native app for a specific device, there are several way to do it. Come see what they and the best practices for creating mobile apps. The good news is that there is something for everyone—the long-time programmer or the non-techncial publisher.
Social media and mobile devices have combined to help create the always-with-us, always-on, always-connected campus. Not just student-to-student but, importantly, institution/faculty/staff-to-student as well as staff-to-staff. We need to look beyond the silo-ed, one-way web sites of the past towards more personal, two-way applications that take advantage of this sea change on campus. The ways in which our users will want to interact with us, the types of tasks they’ll want to complete, and the types of devices we’ll want to deliver to will just continue to proliferate. Now is the time to reevaluate. Using lessons learned at a large land-grant institution we’ll look at what the future friendly campus might look like, ways to plant the seed of that change and tips on how to accomplish it. Experience Level: Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: It's a high-level talk so no technical knowledge will be needed. Hopefully anyone from anywhere in a university can take lessons away from the talk. Skills/Knowledge Gained: A better appreciation for what it will take to migrate our processes from "traditional" thinking to one that addresses how our users will access our content in the future.
The conference committee has planned an exceptional Monday evening reception at the Hintz Alumni Center where you may connect with colleagues, make new friends, and appreciate one of Penn State's finest venues. Partake in delicious food provided by Harrison's, dance and relax amongst friends or stroll the spectacular gardens featuring a tranquil pond accented with fish and ducks.
Amuse yourself with the entertainment options which will include piano music, a band for dancing, gaming and more. The reception is open to all attendees and you will be asked to sign up during the registration process (if you have already registered, you can still add the reception and/or purchase a ticket for an adult guest by using the link and confirmation number provided in your confirmation email).
There’s been a lot of great discussion about responsive web design: merging media queries and flexible, grid-based layouts to create more adaptive, universal designs. But how does a responsive approach affect our design workflow? And when is responsive design right for your project? We’ll look at sites and strategies to try and answer these questions, and learn to become more responsive designers.
Dude, Oracle Application Express has been on the market for several years, but our excellent adventure began two years ago. Indeed, the current release was 3.0 but we wanted the most triumphant...4.1. It had come of age in a Web 2.0 environment. Not only does Application Express (APEX) provide rapid application development for web, it can be used entirely for free in some configurations. We will begin with a brief overview of APEX architecture, and then will expand on the three various means to serve the applications. A most excellent application will be generated "on-the-fly" from an Excel spreadsheet, including a simple validation from a drop down list. Then Security will be discussed, including setup of users and authorization schemes. Active content delivery will be developed and explored, such as charts and interactive reports, including new features such as APEX Plugins, WebSheets and Team Development (an integrated project management tool). Program on, dudes!!!
Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
Basic web knowledge.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Overview of Oracle APEX web application development tool.
n order to help avoid common coding errors, and improve the readability of code, the WordPress community has developed a set of standards to use when formatting the code you use when writing themes, plugins and even core code. Throughout this workshop, we'll review the various standards that have been developed by the community. We'll discuss why they are the way they are; and we'll run through each one in detail. Experience Level: Advanced - Assumes a solid grasp of topic and extensive experience. Prerequisite Knowledge: At least an intermediate understanding of PHP coding is necessary to move through this workshop. A basic understanding of WordPress coding is also good to have, but not necessary. Skills/Knowledge Gained: Writing clean, well-formatted PHP code that fits with the WordPress community coding standards.
Images are crucial to a great website but often web managers have no training in selecting or editing photos. What is the difference in a good photo and one that wows? Are your photos truly telling the story of your organization? How do we best use professional photographers, stock photography, staff photos and user-generated content? Taught by a content strategist trained in photojournalism, this session will help you answer the above questions and discover what is most attractive to users based on eye-tracking research. We will discuss how to avoid the pitfalls that lead to problematic photos on websites. Photos on mobile devices will also be addressed. You will be sure to walk away with practical suggestions to cultivate better photography on your website. Resources for further learning will be provided. Note: This session will not cover details of the use of photo editing software. Instead it will focus on the decision making process and cultivating better content.
Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
None required.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
The Facebook changes announced in September 2011 at the F8 developer's conference significantly impacted fan pages and the way fan page content is received in the newsfeed. Colleges who relied solely on the fan page as their foothold in social media are finding that newsfeed impressions and reach have declined due to changes in the EdgeRank algorithm. Greater user control within Facebook allows even "fans" to filter out content. This presentation will show how leading institutions, like Clemson, Wake Forest and RIT, are promoting brand awareness in Facebook beyond the fan page. They are equipping students and stakeholders with personalized, shareable content they can share in their *own* newsfeeds. Since EdgeRank places more value on content from friends than from fans, these colleges are essentially deputizing their students to spread institutional branding, messaging and content into their social graphs. The presentation will show extensive data on how the sharing and engagement rates of personalized content on Facebook is much higher than generic content. It will also share how these institutions are combining this strategy with their "regular" Facebook fan page strategy and creating overall reports and results to share internally and showcase social engagement. Additionally, the new Facebook Timeline feature will be discussed (pending rollout) along with ways for institutions to seed their brand identity onto Facebook user's timeline. Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge:
Basic understanding Facebook content sharing, newsfeed and EdgeRank algorithm, understanding of the "social graph" concept and the network effect
Skills/Knowledge Gained: Strategies for creating Facebook engagement that do *not* rely on fan pages; Understanding and research/data that shows how to create web content that is more likely to be shared on Facebook and other social networks; Differences in sharing rates between generic content and personalized content; Incorporating content sharing metrics into overall marketing dashboards; optimizing to increase those numbers
Creating and delivering accessible content is easier than you might realize, and it is a must
Whether you are creating accessible web pages, interactive projects, web meeting, or PDF files, a little preparation goes a long way towards creating an accessible document. During this session, you will learn the foundation information you will need to create projects that meet various accessibility standards and see the tools you can employ to continually improve the accessible nature of the work you do. We discuss four topic areas:
Adobe Acrobat and PDF (30 min)
Creating and publishing accessible content in a PDF file
As a standard digital document, the PDF is an important part of any information sharing process. However, it is crucial to ensure that the information contained within the document is accessible to your entire audience—not just segments of it. During this session, you will learn how to create an accessible PDF in the first place, determine if a PDF is accessible, and to intervene in a PDF that lacks accessibility.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 and HTML—including HTML5 (30 min)
Ensuring the accessibility of your web content
HTML is one of the most common ways to deliver content today, and much if it is not accessible at all. With some basic shifts in thinking and a few workflow adjustments, you can better plan for and create accessible HTML. You will learn about the needs for HTML and the ways to create accessible HTML with Adobe Dreamweaver.
Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5 and the Flash platform (30 min)
Interactive projects that can be used by the entire community
It is a misconception that Flash is not accessible. Much like HTML, it depends on the way you create it—and how the project you create with Flash has been built. During this session you learn the 5 best-practice ways to create an accessible Flash project and the mistakes to avoid when creating a project that would make the project inaccessible to your audience.
Adobe Connect 8 (30 min)
eLearning from the perspective of accessible content
Any web conferencing solution will have a major need for accessibility. In the latest version of Connect, there are several features that allow people to take advantage of the content in your web meeting no matter who they are. You will see how to leverage that work with keyboard shortcuts, accessible content within Connect, and by adding Closed Captioning to your meetings.
New online social spaces make tracing works back to their original owner problematic, while at the same time new licensing options make it even easier for people to share and use content legally. This session gives an easy-to-understand view of the issues surrounding copyright and intellectual property from a U.S. perspective, and describes several options for using works while at the same time staying within legal guidelines. It is now possible to easily find art, photography, music, video, content, and even software on the web. All that is needed is a basic understanding of attribution and copyright regulations. In this session, we will cover Open Attribute, Creative Commons licensing, GNU licensing and Fair Use, as well as items in the public domain. In addition, we will discuss how and when you can use use different CC-licenses in the same material. Finally, we will detail technical means to automate the crediting process for using such materials. Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: Attendees should at least somewhat familiar with the concept of copyright and creative commons, though these will largely be explained. Skills/Knowledge Gained: The audience will gain an understanding of how they may properly use CC-licensed materials, and in addition, will learn about technological ways to integrate CC-and other materials correctly into Websites. In addition, participants will leave with a list of resources and websites for information and materials that they can use.
This session will talk about how to use a content management solutions (specifically Adobe CQ) to build, maintain, update and control content on the web, on your mobile sites as well as social media. We will also talk about the use of analytics across all these channels and how to optimize content to ensure the right message is getting to the right people.
Testing websites for accessibility with automated tools provides much useful information – especially with respect to conformance to technical standards. Unfortunately websites can conform to standards and still prove highly unusable for people with disabilities. This session proposes that for accessibility evaluations to be fully effective they should include contributions from three types of examination: (1) use of automated tools where appropriate, (2) human inspection of the underlying code used in the site, and (3) having examiners with disabilities do hands-on user testing of key portions of the site following a use-case oriented protocol. User testing by people with disabilities not only quickly identifies technical barriers but also surfaces significant usability issues resulting from errors of omission and points of ambiguity that will often be missed by automated testing and by human testing done by those not facing the challenges that users with disabilities must contend with. This session will discuss the critical importance of including skilled user testing when evaluation websites and web-based applications for accessibility.
Many World Campus students — who live all over the world — may never have a chance to visit a Penn State campus in person, yet they still want to feel a part of the Penn State family and understand what it means to be a Penn Stater. They may not ever step foot in their adviser's office to see the pictures of family and friends on their walls, but they still want to feel a personal connection to this person, who will be their most constant contact as they work toward their academic goals. We created the Lion Lounge, an area of the World Campus website for current students, to help students feel that connection to World Campus and Penn State. It’s also a place that lets them find information in a user-friendly, engaging way. We conducted a comprehensive content audit and usability testing to ensure that students could easily find information they need. The result was an overwhelming success, based on students’ positive feedback. The site features: •The Backpack, a list of essential links on every page on the site. •A system to post general or technical-related alerts, allowing us to notify students about important events. •A sleek landing page that incorporates alerts, RSS feeds from a student blog and online communities, and a banner-style image that changes each time the page is loaded. •Graduate/undergraduate content that can be filtered at the click of a button. •Engaging bios of many student-facing staff, including advisers and technical support members. •Other helpful sections of the site including “Your Courses: A How-to Guide” and “Paying for Your Education.” •A mobile-friendly version of the site, which includes ways to sync with the World Campus calendar or view in web browser. We continue to develop the site and are incorporating more features to enhance this student-centered site. Experience Level: Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: none. Skills/Knowledge Gained:
understanding of World Campus student audience, example of how we tailored content specifically to meet the needs for our audience, example of how we're building an online community via a website
The Chinese symbol for crisis is interpreted as a "dangerous opportunity." To be sure, a crisis can take all the bandwidth a department can throw at it - both to manage messaging and to calm the stakeholder groups involved. However, there is opportunity inherent in each crisis if we are willing to adopt that perception. During this session, we will focus on establishing an accurate definition of crisis. (No, it's not when your star quarterback gets a hangnail. It could, however, be when your university president accepts a check from the wrong donor.) Next, we'll talk about how recent crises have been handled - with or without the web. These best, and not-so-best practices, will bring us to a list of requirements for crisis communication. Using the framework established in the seminal book on crisis communication - "Effective Crisis Communication: Moving from Crisis to Opportunity" - we will then define steps for web communication before, during, and after a crisis. And how the web can be our bigger boat. Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge:
No skills are necessary, but you must have a willingness to be open and honest about crisis. You also have to be willing to reframe your perception of crisis.
Skills/Knowledge Gained: Attendees will learn an accurate definition of crisis so that they are able to determine which resources to use in which instances. They will learn which practices worked and which didn't in crisis communication management, as well as the required communication steps involved in dealing with a crisis. Finally, the learner will leave the session with a series of actions for before, during, and after a crisis that can be used both on and off the web.
Mobile-friendly content at Penn State - and other universities - has become a necessity, as consumers continue to interface with the web via mobile devices. Penn State's mobile website, m.psu.edu, was launched during the summer 2011 semester, to help meet the demand for an ever increasing mobile audience. m.psu.edu provides essential Penn State information and services anytime, anywhere on one's mobile device, with an interface optimized for on-the-go access.
This session will cover details about the development of m.psu.edu, including the challenges of identifying content useful to users on the go, supporting a broad range of devices, engaging stakeholders, and building a governance system, as well as cover progress-to-date, new developments, and opportunities and challenges for future progress.
Prerequisite skills: none
During this workshop, we will begin writing a very simple WordPress plugin. I will take you through the basic steps of creating the plugin file, including the proper header, and using some basic API functions available in WordPress. Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge:
A basic grasp of PHP concepts will be helpful in this session. A basic working knowledge of using WordPress is also a plus. Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Attendees will be able to utilize the WordPress documentation to begin building their own plugins to add new features to WordPress.
Adobe CQ5 has been developed to maximize compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This session will highlight and demonstrate some of these key accessibility features which enable compliance with regulations such as Section 508. In addition, best-practices and recommended implementation approaches with be presented.
How do you make sense of and promote faculty research if you have no background in their subject area, let alone an advanced degree? How can you work with difficult faculty personalities, from the complete technophobe to the extreme early adopter? This session will draw from Amanda’s experience as a web designer and content strategist at the University of Minnesota, one of the country’s largest research institutions. Learn how to channel your faculty’s expertise into great web content, and build their trust in your knowledge and skills. Bring your questions, triumphs, and war stories! Experience Level: Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: Though faculty and faculty/higher education issues are focused on, the session will be helpful to anyone who works with people and the web. Skills/Knowledge Gained: Identifying different faculty personalities. Strategies to build trust and communication with faculty. Demonstrating the value of the web to faculty members. Levels of faculty involvement in regards to web strategy, content, design.
From the early dice games of ancient Greece to modern geo-location games and Angry Birds: games have long been part of human history. No matter the situation or environment, the urge to play crosses all boundaries – and that urge is growing. More than 174 million Americans are gamers, and the average young person in the United States will spend more than ten thousand hours gaming by the age of 21. As games evolve from their simplest forms into the more complex constructs of modern day, we can see reflected back at us the values, experiences and expectations of generations. Our challenge, then, is to realize how we can use these dynamics in the Web world to, put simply, win. This presentation explores important lessons we can learn from the gaming qualities that compel us, how the game layer is a game *changer* for how we communicate and carry out tasks, and how our websites can apply game-based tactics to fulfill student needs and achieve institutional goals ... all while having a little fun. Experience Level: Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: Basic knowledge of communication methods and game mechanics is helpful, but not necessary. Skills/Knowledge Gained: - Understanding of basic game mechanics - Identification of the game layer and how it is currently functioning in current media - Knowledge of how gaming has influenced our core audience's expectations, and brainstorming thoughts on how we might meet those expectations
Standards. Responsive design. Mobility. These topics are among the most important discussions happening in the web design and development worlds, a fact demonstrated by the impressive keynote speakers lined up for this conference. But are we having the right discussions? Developers focus on the details of implementation, applying their expertise and creativity to channel ideas through the user's technology. Designers focus on presentation and interface, specifying interactive features and aesthetic details that channel ideas through the user's experience. But who is guiding the strategy beyond that inflection point where ideas become meaningful innovations? In too many cases, the individual or group at the helm is following a well-worn track around the dangerous obstacles of irrelevance and inaccessibility when they could be looking to the horizon and imagining a new destination. Go beyond the familiar patterns in your design process by addressing the three most important questions our community can ask: 1. Who are we? 2. How can we get together? 3. What can we do? In this session, you will learn how mapping influence networks, modeling environments, and envisioning capabilities can help you create products, services, and communities that enable empowerment, collaboration, and social change. Examples of each technique will be illustrated in a live case-study re-enactment. Participants will share their ideas and perspectives on a real issue, using the guiding questions to create strategic assets in real time. Each participant will also be given templates and sample assets from the actual case study for future reference. Experience Level:
Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience.
Prerequisite Knowledge: This workshop will benefit those with some professional experience in web design or development, but requires no specific knowledge. I have listed the experience level as intermediate, but beginners may be inspired by the ideas and advanced practitioners are most likely the ones able to immediate put the ideas into practice. Skills/Knowledge Gained:
As stated in the abstract: In this session, you will learn how mapping influence networks, modeling environments, and envisioning capabilities can help you create products, services, and communities that enable empowerment, collaboration, and social change. Examples of each technique will be illustrated in a live case-study re-enactment. Participants will share their ideas and perspectives on a real issue, using the guiding questions to create strategic assets in real time. Each participant will also be given templates and sample assets from the actual case study for future reference.
Penn State now requires that videos that are available to the general public should be made accessible. You could pay $150 per hour of video to send it out to be captioned, or you can do it yourself for free using MovieCaptioner. MovieCaptioner is a cross-platform application that allows you to listen to the audio in short snippets and type what you hear. It will keep repeating the same snippet of the movie until you have what you hear typed. Then hitting the Return key will record the caption and the timecode associated with it and advance you to the next snippet of the movie. When you're all done typing in the captions, it's a simple matter of exporting to many different formats, including YouTube, JW Player, SCC (for iPods and broadcasting), Flash, STL and Adobe Encore for DVDs, and will export text transcripts as well. This session will be a demo of how to use the software and uploading captions to YouTube will be demonstrated as well. Each attendee can get a free copy of MovieCaptioner to use on their own computer. Experience Level: Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge:
No prerequisite knowledge needed. The software only requires some typing skills. Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Attendees will be able to use MovieCaptioner.
One of the biggest buzz phrases of 2011 has been “responsive web design,” an emerging practice centered around creating designs that “anticipate and respond to users’ needs.” With the surge in mobile and tablet devices, this approach has a lot of value. But what about the substance that those designs support: the content. This prompts two questions: one, what adjustments should we make for our content in a responsive design world, and two, what does (or should) “responsive content” mean? In this presentation, I will discuss some of the answers to these questions, including content for the mobile and location-sensitive web, the print-web dichotomy, and how content responds across the life cycle of our higher ed audience. Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge: An understanding of the basic definition of responsive design Basic understanding of content creation and maintenance practices
Skills/Knowledge Gained: Understanding of how to shape content in a responsive design context Understanding of possible interpretations of "responsive content" and how to apply them.
In today's world of massive websites, it's easy to err on the side of not deleting. But content strategy demands that we hone in on what's critical and eliminate the extraneous. How should we make decisions about deleting content? What role should SEO play? What do our customers really want? This session explores models for creating strategy and evaluating content accordingly. Bring your questions about the best way to manage web content, and we'll share some ideas for making your customers happy and improving your operational efficiency. Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge: Need basic understanding of SEO and content management. Skills/Knowledge Gained: Participants will learn how to evaluate content with a critical eye. They will understand methods for evaluating content, including readability and SEO.
WordPress is an amazing and flexible tool, and becomes even more incredible when set up in a multisite environment. For many higher education institutions, though, even multisite is not broad enough to fit the information architecture of our websites. That's where Multi-Network comes into play. At UMW, the university website is built on a WordPress Multi-Network environment, with nearly 30 multisite setups running inside of a single WordPress installation. This session will touch on the basics of setting up WordPress to work as a Multi-Network tool, and some tips to get plugins and themes working more efficiently in this unique environment.
Experience Level:
Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
A basic knowledge of WordPress and the WordPress setup process will be necessary.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Attendees will gain knowledge of the way multisite and multi-network installations work, the way the databases are structured for each, and how to optimize various items within WordPress to work efficiently in these types of setups.
Responsive design, application development using APIs, and content strategy are the hot topics in .edu right now. These ideas belong to a bigger umbrella: ubiquitous computing and the role it plays in our lives. Traditional ideas of usability are undergoing dynamic changes as we move away from a desktop-first model of personal computing. The internet refrigerator already exists and it's only the tip of the iceberg. In the near future, human-computer interactions will be thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. Postdesktop is a session to view responsive design as part of a larger context and to think about a shift that is changing the devices we use to access the web, the delivery method for education, the teaching and learning experience, and the whole of our lives. Topics will include a look at the role of pervasive computing:
• as it relates to responsive design
• in the classroom and textbooks
• in .edu marketing
• as a source of utility on campuses
This session is intended for participants who are responsible for managing one or more web sites -- or part of a web site -- and want to be able to maximize the accessibility of their content. Among other things, participants will learn: the most common accessibility traps and how to avoid them, how to recognize potential problems with a visual scan, what tools are available to evaluate accessibility, and how to interpret the results of your PSU (or other automated) accessibility scan. The goal is to provide web managers with succinct information and practical strategies for going beyond minimum requirements and making accessibility evaluation and remediation part of their standard workflow. While the focus will be on web managers, anybody who manages web content will benefit from the session. Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge: Familiarity with html and basic web technologies (css, javascript, etc.) is helpful. Skills/Knowledge Gained: How to evaluate and improve the accessibility of your web content.
What do we mean when we talk about "the web"? When we write policies, hire employees, define unit responsibilities and assess organizational needs, it is helpful to start with a solid and shared understanding of the different pieces that make up today's higher education web sites. This presentation aims to improve all these activities by proposing a definition of the distinct pieces that we can share across our institutions to improve how we govern the web. Once that is established, the framework will be applied to these other activities. Experience Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of topic and some experience. Prerequisite Knowledge:
Understand the broad purposes for which colleges and universities engage the web today. Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Gain a tool that can be used to mentally break down a web issue into its constituent pieces and assess needs, describe responsibilities, and write effective policies.
In conjunction with a full website redesign, Penn State World Campus launched a mobile site (m.worldcampus.psu.edu) in July 2011. Because the World Campus website is focused on marketing and conversion -- the end goal is to compel users to either start an application or complete a "request for information" form -- the restrictions of the mobile environment presented a set of very unique challenges. Would site visitors really complete a form on their phone? How much information is too much when users will be reading pages on their phone? Would we need to maintain two separate sets of content (for the mobile and PC sites)? How does marketing work in the mobile environment? Four months after launch, the World Campus mobile site is used by thousands of visitors each month, and has generated more than three thousand prospect leads. This presentation will step through each stage in the process of building the mobile site, including information architecture, content strategy, design for mobile, technical elements, analytics, and mobile marketing. We'll focus on lessons learned in the process of building and maintaining the mobile site, including intended and unintended results. Participants will ideally learn more about the challenges -- and some possible solutions -- of building a website for this constantly shifting mobile environment.
Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
None.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Participants will ideally learn more about the challenges -- and some possible solutions -- of building a website for the constantly shifting mobile environment.
In this presentation we will discuss the pros and cons of putting your business operations in the cloud including databases and servers. We will talk about things to consider when going to the cloud and present a case study on World Campus Learning Design's use of Intuit Quickbase for managing courses.
Experience Level:
Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic.
Prerequisite Knowledge:
none.
Skills/Knowledge Gained:
Various cloud services offered. Information to have before procuring a cloud service. Practical uses of the services.
