Web Design Articles What Information a College/School Website Should Publish?
- By Prasad Bodepudi, CEO, HamaraShehar.com
I’m sure that it is a billion dollar question. If the general dot coms knew the answer for this, there wouldn’t be the global slowdown from mid 2001.
What you publish on your website depends on who is the target website visitors. Typical target visitors for educational institutes such as schools, colleges, universities and private teaching/ coaching institutes could be divided into two broad categories. - Students - Both existing and new
- Parents - parents of existing students as well as parents of prospective students
It also depends on the purpose of the website. Your website should help in: - Reducing Administrative Workload
By providing detailed information on your website, you are reducing the burden on your staff in answering routine and repeated questions and they can spend their valuable office time in other productive things. - Cutting-down Expenses
It should help in cutting-down expenses on paper, printing, photocopying, etc. Just use your website to post notices, circulars - Finding Information Quickly
It also helps prospective students and their parents in taking quick decision on whether they should enroll into your institute or not. Imagine a situation where a prospective student parent, who is living in some other city/ state/ country, have a question and they are trying to reach you by telephone. But, your institute is closed on that day due of a strike or curphew or something else or imagine the concerned office staff is on leave. How Detailed Information is Detailed?
Information that you publish on your website should be as detailed as possible, at least from reducing the workload on your staff point of view. Let’s take a web page on ‘Scholarships’ page.
Example: If you simply say “We provide scholarships to talented students”, is it going to help any student or parent? All they will know by reading this page is that your institute offers scholarships. But, it still doesn’t answer the common questions such as “Who are eligible?”, “How much the scholarship is?”, and the application form to apply, etc. If you provide all that info right there, all your staff has to do is just accept the application, since all the pre-application is already took care by the website. Recommended WebPages and Their Content
Your website should have the following web pages (listed alphabetically) at minimum. “General Guidelines for Preparing Website Documents” are listed at the end of this document. The more information you provide, the more professional your institute website will look, and attract more users worldwide. Academics Page(s)
List all available courses, medium, number of available seats, Syllabus for each course year/ semester. (Just saying OU Syllabus will not make the website informative). Accommodation Page(s)
If your institution has hostel facility, then publish detailed description of facilities, fee details, rules of conduct and also provide the admission form. Admissions Page(s)
List admission procedures for each course and year, fee, eligibility, and current admission details. Provide Admission Forms and also mention how to get the brochure or other forms in-person or by post. Affiliations Page(s)
List any affiliations that your institute may have with Indian/ foreign universities or other institutions, their info in short, affiliated courses, whether the student need to attend exam here or some where else in order to get that institution certificates, any additional fee details (if applicable), etc. Alumni Page(s) - List of people who are in great position, their photographs, the course and batch in which they studied in your institution, their current contact info (if available).
- If you are requesting any help from them, please clearly state so. Example: if you are requesting any financial help for any developments, etc OR arranging any alumni get-together, etc. Include contact info wherever applicable.
- It would be great to publish group photos of each batch from the starting of your institution and names of each person in the group photo.
Awards Page(s)
List all the awards received by your students, faculty members, management or the institution itself. Make sure to include award name, year, details and pictures. Contact information Page
Include full postal address, telephone, fax, telex, email address, how to reach there, city bus or other travel facilities. Events Page(s)
List all the events that were celebrated so far starting from latest to backwards. These events could be cultural events, anniversaries, any special events such as NCC events, inauguration events, etc., sports events, etc. Exams Page(s)
List all the exams and their schedules for the current year/ semester for each course. Facilities Page(s)
List all facilities including library, lab, playgrounds, computer lab and other labs, etc, with detailed description. List all the games facilities such as courts and equipment that is available to play in the playground. Don’t forget to include both outdoor and indoor facilities. Faculty Page(s)
Please note that faculty or teaching members make the whole difference for a college name. Most of the times, students enroll into an institution just because it has good faulty and nothing else matters, including the institution reputation in general. Hence, it is very important to publish well-written profile of each and every teaching member. If you don’t have them, it is a good idea to ask teaching members to write his/her own profile and submit the same.
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List all professors/ lecturers/ faculties/ teachers/ readers by designation |
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Make sure to mention their full name. Expand surname and middle name initials. Wherever applicable, add the name that he/she is popularly known as in parenthesis |
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Check with your vendor whether they can provide emails for each of your staff and management |
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Make sure not to forget passport photographs of each one of them |
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Profiles are recommended to be half-a-page longer at least |
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Please note that, profile is not bio-data or resume. Profiles need to be written in third-person and need to be either small narrative paragraphs or in bulleted format | Fee Details
It’s a good idea to list all fee details, so that visitors can refer to fee details on a single page. ‘From the Desk of …’ Page(s)
Publish message from one/ all/ combination of the chairman, secretary, principal, and correspondent. Holidays Page
List all holidays including public holidays and any holidays specific to your institution. Just saying as per OU or other university or board name instead of full list will not make your website informative at all. Institute Background Page(s)
Write detailed history of your institution, when it started, construction photos and inauguration photos, and so on. Include summary of all achievements or milestones since the inauguration. Library Page
List approximately how many books it has, available magazines and newspapers, library rules and regulations such as how many books or magazines a student or lecturer can borrow, late fees details, library fee and refundable fee details, etc. Management Page(s)
Detail profiles about promoters including current chairman, secretary, correspondent, principal, etc., along with photos. Listing all former people in those positions make this page complete. Objectives Page
List the objectives of the institute. Parents Page(s)
Message for parents, which includes what they should and shouldn’t do, etc. Summary of parents meetings in chronological order is also recommended. Rules of Conduct Page(s)
Well, the name of the page describes what goes into this page. Scholarships Page(s)
List of scholarships granted by your institution as well as other private organizations or govt. scholarships, scholarship amounts, eligibility requirements, applications. Top Rankers Page(s)
List of top rankers going from the current/ last year to backwards, their photographs, rank, marks and exams in which they ranked. Travel Page(s)
If your institute has a bus, provide the information including the routes it travel to pick-up/drop-off students/staff and their timings. Having a picture would make the page more attractive. Uniform Page
List uniform details. If not applicable, state the same, so that it will be clear for your website visitors.
Sports facilities details, competition details, pictures, award winner pictures, etc. Your Institute Logo & Slogan
Make sure to scan your institute logo and slogan as it is and publish on the website. General Guidelines For Preparing Website Documents
Make sure to double or triple check each document for spelling and grammar, once when you prepare the material and again after it is published on the website. In the Internet culture, people simply go away from the site when they see any spelling or grammatical mistakes. Lot of them don’t even bother about alerting you about those mistakes when they find, they simply go away for good.
On top of it, Internet search engines index the misspelled words and when people are looking for the correctly spelled words, they will not able to find your website. So, it is really important to do our homework very well.
If you are writing or editing these documents on the computer, make sure to set the document language to UK English. By default, all the software uses US English, but in India, we use UK English. Recommended Material for College Home Pages
The more detailed the information the better it is.
For example: instead of just saying scholarships are available, if they can mention about eligibility for the scholarship, amounts, frequency, who got scholarships in the recent years, their pictures, etc, that will be more informative. Another example would be, instead of saying all school or govt. holidays, if we mention all their holidays explicitly, it makes more informative to the visitor.
Similar concept needs to be applied for each of the following. Even though none of the following are mandatory, having all of them makes their college home pages look like more professionals and attract more students or parents.
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School/College History |
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Promoters Info including Detailed Profile & Pictures |
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List of available courses, medium, number of available seats |
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Syllabus for each course year/semester wise. (Just saying OU Syllabus will not make the website informative) |
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Admissions Information including when they start, procedures, pre-requisites, etc. |
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Admission Forms |
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Full Details of Facilities including pictures of each facility. Ex: Labs, Playgrounds, Library, etc. |
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List of Top Rankers in each year from the School/ College from the first year operation |
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All lecturers/ teachers, head of the department, principal, head master details including photos |
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List of Awards won by students and school/ college, photos |
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Details of Hostel Facilities, Rules, etc. |
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Scholarship Details if any |
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A dedicated page with message or letter to parents |
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Code of Conduct OR Discipline page to students |
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Any recent notices |
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List of Holidays |
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Exam schedules |
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Fee Details |
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Objectives |
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Contact information including full postal address, how to reach there, city bus or other travel facilities |
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Sports facilities details, competition details, pictures, award winner pictures, etc. |
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School or College bus information if available |
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Uniform Details if any |
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Anniversary celebration pictures with descriptions |
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Extra-curricular activities details |
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Profiles of Top rankers, Interviews, Quotes by their parents |
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