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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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
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
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.
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.
