If you’ve been working for a few years in higher education, you’ve seen your fair share of fads. So, when something new pops up on your radar, the first thing you need to do is to try to figure out if it’s just fad or if there is anything to it that can help your institution.

Since my job is to help you learn and grow in your higher ed career, I’m often trying to do this evaluation work often very early in the game (no pun intended).

That’s the reason why I took Professor Werbach’s Coursera course on gamification last year (really killing 2 birds with 1 stone in this instance by getting a first-hand experience with a MOOC by Coursera and learning more about gamification).

In theory, gamification could do wonder for higher education, for the academic side as well as the marketing/communication side of the house.

In practice, though, nobody seems to have lost sleep over their gamified web experience or next campaign in our community (yet?)

How comes?

Is it too early?
Is it too late?
Are we too busy with everything else?

I have to admit: I’m not sure yet.

Meet one of the players in the “gamification for #highered” game

That’s why I had to ask Bryan Fendley, Director of Academic Computing at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, about gamification in/for higher education.

I got to know Bryan a bit more over the past year, because he is at the top of the unofficial leaderboard at Higher Ed Experts as a “super alum” who took not 1, not 2, but 3 of our online courses so far :-)

Bryan is quite a Renaissance man: an educator, an instructional designer, a developer, a presenter and a blogger. Over the years, he has developed a deep interest in game design and gamed learning.

This summer at eduWeb in Boston he will even present a 3-hour workshop about gamification of college marketing. Today, he answers a few of my burning but simple questions about gamification so you can get a better idea about it.

1) What is gamification?

First, think of the things that make up a game: points, score boards, challenges, levels, even rules.
Now, take these same elements and use them to motivate and engage people in real world situations.

In a nutshell that’s gamification: it’s a way to engage people by making something that’s not a game feel like a game. But, it’s not just about playing around. Gamification is a tool used to meet an objective.

It may sound simple, but it’s a real combination of art and science. Not everybody believes gamification will even work. At the same time critics voice their opinions, gamification is applied successfully in several industries: sales, human resources, education, and marketing. We have studies backing up gamification as a viable marketing approach. Although, most of those studies are coming from the big gamification companies. As gamification matures, we are going to see more scholarly research added to the mix. Since gamification is a relatively new phenomenon, since around 2009, it’s still working to prove itself as a respectable discipline.

Additionally, we know a lot of people have grown up playing video games. Video games are heavy influencers for gamification practitioners. It’s almost like game thinking is becoming part of our DNA. People understand games. Just about everybody speaks the language. That’s one reason gamification makes sense. People easily understand how to play along. Most game mechanics will already feel familiar to your users. This familiarity makes onboarding people into your gamified campaigns easier.

Gamification is also coming on strong because, the technologies to put gamification in place already exist. They are already out there, waiting to be leveraged. Social media being one of the most pivotal of those technologies. Social media and gamification share a strong relationship.

For example: social media and gamification go together like peanut butter and jelly. Gamification increases brand loyalty through engagement and social media is sitting there waiting to amplify the message from your users engagement. It’s like, I am spending time interacting with and discovering your brand. Then I get a badge. Do I want to notify my friends? Sure, tweet my accomplishment and ask my friends to play. If you pay attention, you can see gamification sneaking in all around you, especially in marketing.

2) Can you share examples of gamified systems in higher education?

What I have noticed, is that within higher education it seems that there are two paths to gamification and marketing. Buy into a service, or build your own.

Although, some of the big gamification companies I have spoken to, say they have higher ed clients: most don’t list a category on their site for current education customers. This makes me think, higher education may be slow moving into gamification. At least at the paid service level.

When it comes to openly identifying educational clientele, SCVNGR seems to be the exception among gamification companies. They have an exhaustive list of higher education customers. When SCVNGR first started in the business, their focus was on education. I think that is why you see so many universities who have used SCVNGR’s quest based service.

Brigham Young University has a full-on gamification initiative on their BYUtvSports website. They partnered with Gigya to provide incentives to fans for sharing and engaging with content. Users are rewarded for the time they spend, and thousands of signups were reported after the initial launch of the gamified web experience. You can watch the video that markets this experience.

There are big advantages to working with a company that specializes in gamification. Not only do you gain their expertise, you inherit their gamification infrastructure. This can be helpful because: many already have partnerships with other companies to help maximize the impact of your efforts. Additionally, they can often provide you with analytics to help measure your success. I don’t think anybody should underestimate the complexity that can be involved with gamification. It reminds me of days of old, when some organizations considered building their own social networks, instead of leveraging existing infrastructures.

That being said, there are schools that are developing their own gamification initiatives with success. These initiatives seem to fall into two camps:

• they are putting a game layer on top of real life. This is referred to as an alternate reality game.
• they are working to add simple gamification mechanics to their existing campaigns or web portals.

An interesting example of a game layer on top of real life is University of Southern California’s “Reality”. Reality is equal parts card game, media creation tool, and web portal. It is used by the Cinema School to make students more aware of it’s resources and faculty by engaging students early in their academic careers.

In contrast, an example of using simple game mechanics for an existing campaign, can be found in the Penn State Alumni Challenge for Former Student-Athletes. A challenge is presented to former student athletes to support their team. The site provides links to make a donation, and a graph is provided to show which team is in the lead to receive two $6,000 prizes. Winning is based on which team has the most increase in giving by former student athletes or the most increase over their previous year.

3) In your opinion, how institutions should use gamification in their marketing strategy?

Gartner made a recent statement that by 2014, 80 percent of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily due to poor design. Gartner thinks that most current gamification is driven by novelty or hype. I would agree with that. We need to focus on a key word in Gartner’s statement. They never said gamification wouldn’t work. Gartner provides several scenarios where they believe gamification will have an impact. The key words in their warning is “meeting business objectives”.

Obviously you can’t just put a game face on a campaign and expect great results. Its too easy to get caught up in the mechanics and to start thinking it’s a great game experience for your target market/players. Poor implementation or design of the gamified campaign won’t lead to meeting marketing objectives.

If you are going to use gamification, take the time to understand why it works. Focus on your objectives and build in a few game mechanics at a time. You have to look at your marketing challenges and really ask yourself: is a game going to make this more engaging or interesting? If it’s not, don’t try to gamify it. You are just going to make the experience laborious for your users.

By definition, it’s not a game unless people want to play. You have to leverage gamification in such a way that it drives users to voluntarily engage, and keep engaging. There has to be a level of enjoyment. If you think gamification can help you meet an objective, go for it. Just remember to follow good gamification design, and hopefully people will be interested enough to play.

It’s not business as usual, it’s a game.

What do YOU think about gamification?

Have you created or implemented a gamified experience at your institution?
Have you seen a gamified marketing campaign from another institutions that looked interesting?

Please, share with the group by posting a comment to let us know if you think whether or not gamification has a role to play in higher education.

Because, it’s the top reason why the most engaged higher ed web and marketing professionals have become de-facto life-long learners.

Earlier this month, I sent a survey on professional training to 785 Higher Ed Experts active members, the top 25% most engaged members when it comes to professional development. The survey was conducted on a 2-week period and got a response rate of 22% with 172 respondents.

According to this survey, 80% of your most engaged colleagues invest their professional development budget to learn or develop a skill that will help them make a difference at work.

We live in a world of options when it comes to professional training and development: conferences, workshops, webinars offered by agencies or vendors, articles, blogs, Twitter chats, LinkedIn groups, online conferences and online courses.

Because my job at Higher Ed Experts is to help you learn and grow in your higher ed career, I follow a lot of what is done in this area, regularly attending conferences, reading an insane amount of content pertaining to new trends, challenges and practices and curating the most useful resources for you so you don’t have to spend the time you don’t have to keep up with what is out there.

Over the past 2 years, I’ve learned a great deal on how adults learn as well as instructional design principles and best practices.

Different ways for learning different things

And, as you might already know, there isn’t a unique optimal way to learn… everything.

• If you want to learn best practices in the industry and get inspired by others, conferences are definitely the way to go.
• If you want to keep up with the latest trends and technologies, online events will deliver the most bang for your buck because there isn’t the usual 6 to 9-month time lag that comes with calls for proposals. It doesn’t get fresher :-)
• If you want to know what others are doing, blogs and online articles do a pretty good job at keeping you inform (and they get brownie points because you can scan them ;-)
• If you want to understand and learn a complex process or phenomenon and are lucky enough to find a book about it, then go for it.
• If you want to learn or develop a professional skill and don’t have a mentor to rely on, courses or workshops spread on several days or weeks and including the right mix of theory, reflexion, how-tos and practice are the only way you’ll be able to master this skill. There are things you can’t learn only by reading or watching materials. And, professional skills belong to this category.

Things now even get more complex because of the Internet that is putting your brain to the test by saturating it with its information-rich environment, full of distractions (kitten videos, anybody?) and interruption (you’ve got mail!). As this awesome 4-minute video explains, it’s more challenging now to find the time for calm thinking that will lead to knowledge consolidation.

It’s in this context that we’ve designed our 4-week online courses for higher ed. By curating and updating on a constant basis a set of videos, readings, class discussions and practical assignments you can use at work, each of our instructors act as your personal mentor making sure you learn by reading, watching, discussing and doing.

That’s why more and more of Higher Ed Experts alums (professionals like you working in universities and colleges) keep coming back to take more of our courses.

30 minutes live with Higher Ed Experts alums, higher ed professionals like you

But, don’t take my word for it and join 3 of them this Wednesday (May 22nd) at 9AM ET in a live informal conversation powered by Google Hangout so they can tell you about their experience (register to receive a reminder and share with folks you know)

The next session of our courses starts on June 10 — and will be a bit longer than usual so you can enjoy the 4th of July holiday weekend without thinking about homework.

Because this session spans from June 10 to July 10, you can also pay your course registration AFTER July 1st and use your 2013-2014 budget while learning the skills that will help you make a difference at work this summer.

Gillian Richard is a student at The University of Alabama and a member of their PRSSA chapter. She is also a member of Platform Magazine, an online, student-run publication at UA.

Last but not least, she is incredibly patient and has fantastic professional communication skills.

Gillian pitched me a story in late February. She wanted to write a guest post for this blog. I usually don’t publish guest posts – especially because they are often used for search engine optimization purposes by lead generation websites, not interested in your eye balls my dear readers but only by the Google juice this blog can deliver.

Yet, I decided to make an exception and accept Gillian’s offer, because I knew she could write something interesting for YOU.

Who doesn’t want to hear from a member of our top target audience?

Gillian submitted her piece very promptly and even added a few more examples at my request. She prepared the screenshots and followed up diligently with me. Unfortunately, the craziness that my work is today has prevented me from publishing this piece until today (my apologies again, Gillian!).

With students today, it’s all about (public) relations!

Life at a university or college offers much more independence to students, and because there is not as much structure, effective communication can be difficult. The University of Alabama has 33,602 students. Reaching out to that big of an audience can prove challenging, but there are certain techniques college PR departments can use to reach out to their target audiences.

Growing your enrollment through PR

One of the best ways that colleges and universities can implement PR strategies is marketing to potential students. Before we worry about how to talk to students, we must have students to talk to. So what’s the best way?

I can’t tell you, unfortunately.

However, I can tell you that it’s important to make sure your platform is appropriate and timely.

The world has changed significantly even in the three years since I applied to college. I had one college send me multiple letters a week. While keeping contact is key, don’t go overboard.

Also, your platform needs to match the audience.

Letters can be effective, because you do have to take into consideration that you are appealing to your student’s parents as well; however, today’s students are tech-savvy, so the Internet and social media are great ways to build a relationship with them.

I also had colleges sending me letters after most of their scholarship deadlines had passed. That’s not helpful at all. Start your relationship-building tactics early, and give plenty of time for students to make their decision and still have time to meet any deadlines.

Higher ed strategies

One of the keys in communicating with college students is to stay relaxed.

Where I think so many administrative departments go wrong is in taking themselves too seriously. Your job is serious, but at the same time, college is a time to have fun, enjoy and learn, and we want that laid-back attitude when it comes to administration as much as possible.

During crisis situations, that relaxed attitude obviously has to change a little bit. However, keeping calm in times like this is more important than ever.

While I can only vouch for UA, our media relations department does it right in times of trouble. The tornado that came through Tuscaloosa almost two years ago is a prime example. We were constantly updated with emails, text alerts and even phone calls to keep us informed on what was happening on campus and in town. It’s important to remember while communicating in a crisis in the higher ed world, you’re responsible for keeping students informed, as well as their families.

Keeping open channels of communication, even just for day-to-day news, is imperative to having a successful communications program.

“The University of Alabama is always on top of their social media strategies. More often than not, I learn about campus events on Twitter before ever receiving a formal email,” said Haley Clemons, a student at the university. “Information is constantly being shared between students and faculty. It also makes it easy to sign up for events because links are easily accessible on my Twitter feed.”

Obviously social media is one of the best ways to reach out to students, not only because it’s quick and convenient, but also because it’s the most popular channel for news among that target audience.

“I’ve never felt disconnected from the University in terms of social media,” said Kaitlyn Honnold, public relations major at the University of Alabama. “If there’s even a bad thunderstorm, the university warns me about it through phone calls, Twitter, Facebook, emails and text messages.”

Being involved with social media means staying updated on current trends. I’m not saying that you should download Snapchat, but if it’s an outlet that you can use to effectively communicate with your student body and help you form positive relationships, it might be worth checking out.

It all boils down to this: When you’re working in higher education, students and parents need to know what’s going on quickly, and in a manner appealing to them.

I have to admit: I do.

And, chances are you do too according to “The enemy of clarity,” a post Andrew Careaga wrote earlier this week.

We live in a world of possibilities – and while it’s fantastic, it is definitely more challenging to make decisions, the right decisions. That’s the reason I was really excited when I heard about the Heath brothers new book: Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. And, while I was searching to order it it on Amazon, I got sidetracked after looking at the related books listed on the page and seeing the bright yellow cover (my brain is a sucker for anything in the neighborhood of orange) of the “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz.

Then, when I read the subtitle: “Why More is Less – How the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction,” I was totally sold. I had to read this book that promised to answer the big question that had bothered me for a few months. Published in 2004, the book was apparently a classic I’ve had managed to miss – until last month – in my reading quest.

So, here’s my 1-1-1 Express Book Review of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz, Professor at Swarthmore College.

1 thing I liked

While this book resonated 10 years ago when it was first published, it definitely hits even more the target in our social media world where everybody has become a publisher. Without the financial barrier of entry, tons of content is written, published and shared every day. Breaking through the noise is the real challenge today for college marketers and universities communicators. And, it has become tougher and tougher. By analyzing the plethora of choices available today, this book offers some solace to the burnt-out-by-too-many-choices brains.

In the book, Prof Schwartz makes a few higher ed references and illustrates the burden of choice by discussing the challenges faced by students and their families when it comes to choosing the best (and often not the right) college or academic path. As he explained, it’s no wonder they are paralyzed in a world where social comparison is at its highest with the always-on life broadcasting empowered by facebook, twitter and the likes. But, beyond the diagnostic of the issue, this book also offers a roadmap to help us survive and thrive in this world of choices.

1 thing I didn’t like too much

I love this book, because reading it really felt like chicken soup for the overburden-by-choices soul. But, as you know, if you read a few of my book reviews, I’m always going for a balanced view. So, I would say that the first part of the book, “When we choose,” detailing all the different parts of our lives where we are presented with a choice was a bit too long to my taste. The context has changed a lot in the past decade and I believe that the explosion of choices has intensified exponentially. As a result, it is probably an easier case to make than it was a decade ago.

1 big take-away from the book

At the end of the book, in Part 4, Barry Schwartz offers 11 action-oriented strategies to cope with the burden of choice. I’m not going to share all of them, but the 3 ones I found the most useful:

• Choose when to choose:
  It’s not because we can spend our day choosing among many options every single detail of our life that we should. You need to find out when a choice really matters to you. A simple illustration of this principle is Steve Job’s or Mark Zuckenberger’s wardrobe choices. Both have spent a great deal of time making important choices in their successful careers, but the way they dressed wasn’t important for what they set to achieve. So, they choose an outfit that worked for them once and sticked with it.
• Satisfice more, maximize less:
  Both terms are explained in the book, but what it comes down to is to aim for good enough in as many areas of your life as possible when the ultimate best is not a requirement. This one is a struggle for “recovering perfectionist” me. But, you got to face it: not every task accomplished needs to be a work-of-art. The facebook motto I’ve heard about while reading “Lean In” written by its COO, Sheryl Sandberg, has become a new favorite of mine: “done is better than perfect.”
• Learn to love constraints:
  As a painter focusing his attention and creativity on a given canvas, you have to limit the options to a more friendly number to accomplish anything. Prof Schwartz advises to create your own set of rules and standards for helping in the case of mundane decisions. This will allow you to let your autopilot deal with these small choices and your brain focus on what really matters.

Check out the TED Talk!

It’s 20-minute long and really focuses on the 1st part of the book, but it will give you an idea about what the paradox of choice is.

Sometimes it’s the case.
Sometimes it isn’t.

Higher ed has always had a love-hate relationship with email marketing. We use and abuse it without always understanding its core strengths, limits and associated risks.

Greg Rubenstein, Web Properties Director at A.T. University used to work for WestStar TalkRadio Network where he sent millions of email marketing messages.

A few weeks ago Greg took the 8-week online course on Social Media Marketing for Higher Ed I teach at Higher Ed Experts. While the focus of my course is social media marketing, we have a class discussion about the social media vs. email issue at some point in the course.

Greg shared with his classmates the few following very good tips on how to adjust email marketing best practices to a higher ed audience (shared again today with his permission):

The 1st issue is audience: faculty/staff versus students

Our student population is entirely graduate level. A fairly substantial percentage is seeking post-professional degrees, and another large segment are pursuing a master – or doctorate-level degree via online education.

These students do not open email.

Even communication that’s highly-targeted and of particular importance, such as commencement instructions sent only to a particular class, will have open rates indicating universal disinterest.

Faculty and staff are better about reading email, with open and click-through rates (CTR) being fairly predictable.

A message from the President’s Office, or a call-to-action (CTA) that’s easy or very focused, will produce acceptable results. Generic monthly “newsletters,” such as mass email sent from one department to everyone, returns about the same results as sending to students.

The 2nd issue is content

Don’t send an email because you haven’t done so in “a while.”

Don’t assume someone’s interested in what you have to say.

Don’t assume that just because you hit delete on all those other messages, recipients of your emails won’t do the same.

Everyone is busy. That’s the universal truth in all walks of life. People will only pay attention when doing so is either required or it’s in their personal interest. For communication via email to be successful, the content has to be relevant, written to a professional standard and be presented in a layout that makes comprehension easy.

The last issue is context

To get an email message read, it first has to make it to the recipient’s inbox. It then has to be opened. Once opened, it must be inviting enough to warrant further reading. Finally, CTAs must work as expected—links must be where the reader expects, and function as anticipated.

The university environment is somewhat of a captured audience, and email delivery inside the institution hopefully isn’t ever a problem. Getting messages to external audiences (not using the university’s .edu domain) faces the same hurdles as all other commercial email delivery. Whether sending internally or externally, making sure of Can-Spam compliance is a basic requirement.

Email subject line selection is both art and science. Writing good subject lines is critical not only for enticing the recipient to open the email, but in making sure the message arrives at all. There are many resources on the subject — do a Google search, and MailChimp has some good rules-of-thumb.

Message format, along with the look and feel, will make the difference between opened and deleted or obtaining a click-through. If any text in your message is in, or part of, an image, you are losing clicks. The only exception is wordmarks/text used as design elements. Making best-practice email messages requires more work than just sending an image, but the difference in results is worth the effort.

Test before you send

My final suggestion is to test before you hit send button.

This time.
Next time.
Every time.

Best practice testing is minimally viewing the message as a test sent in the major freemail clients—gmail, yahoo, hotmail/live, icloud, etc., as well as in the “big four” browsers: Chrome, Firefox, IE and Safari.

However, some of you might work for institutions where the pros and cons of responsive websites are still debated.

Well, fire up your email client or printer, because my latest Internet Technologies column is just for you :-)

Published in the May 2013 issue of University Business, “To Go or Not to Go … Responsive,” explains why institutions should go responsive by discussing 3 top reasons:

1. We live in a multi-device world!
2. Mobile and tablet web traffic on university websites is on the rise.
3. More and more institutions have chosen to go responsive.

In this article, I’m also sharing in a short “online extra”, “Planning a Responsive Redesign: Mind your Content!”, why content (and not code) is the most challenging and important part for any responsive web project including shout-outs to Haverford College, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Lynn University.

Haverford College made sure new content would work with their new Admissions responsive website launched in February 2013 (fabulous screeshot courtesy of Am I Responsive?)

4-week online course: Mobile & Responsive Web Design for Higher Ed
(asynchronous with weekly lessons and assignments)
ONLY 10 seats per session

As I mentioned a month ago just before the High Ed Web New England conference, Higher Ed Experts has chosen to support the 5 regional conferences this year and help them bring great keynote speakers.

Whether or not you get got a chance to attend the High Ed Web Florida conference next week in Gainsville, I also wanted to make sure that you would learn a bit from the conference keynote speaker, Daniel Ryan who was Director of Front-end Development at Obama for America 2012.

That’s why I asked him to tell us more about him, some amazing tips to raise online donations and his keynote.

1) You worked for the Obama Campaign. Can you tell us how you manage to get the job in the first place and what you did?

My journey with the campaign started back in 08. I was working at an agency in Chattanooga, Tennessee, managing the front-end developers there when I got an email blast from the Obama campaign looking for web developers. I applied and had a few interviews, but apparently got lost in the shuffle. There’s been a lot of press about how well we targeted folks with our emails during the 2012 cycle; that’s how they got me the second time around. Late one evening I received an email from the campaign looking for developers once again. The next morning I uploaded my résumé. About 30 minutes later I got a reply back from Kyle Rush, who later became my deputy. Kyle and I set up an interview later that week. A few weeks after that I had moved to Chicago and started working at the campaign.

I started as a Senior Developer but it didn’t take long before I was promoted to Director of Front-end Development. Kyle, Jeff Louden, Michael Renehan, Jason Rico and I formed the leadership of our team as we built up to two dozen staff. Our team was divided along the lines of the main functions of a campaign: fundraising, persuasion and turning out voters.

2) Obviously, the campaign managed to raise a lot of money online. Any lessons learned on the web development front that universities and colleges could use in their fundraising efforts?

Totally. I don’t think we had any secret sauce at the campaign, we just combined lots of smart smaller decisions together. Members of the development team, along with project managers, email writers, designers and advertising experts, formed a working group around optimizing our donation experience. We ran hundreds of A/B tests (using Optimizely.com) comparing various layouts, imagery and language.

If there’s one major takeaway I could give to folks, it is always follow the data. Never make assumptions without something to back them up with. I think the number of times we predicted a testing outcome accurately was far lower than when we got it wrong. We took that to heart and tested everything.

A few specific lessons we learned that I think are applicable everywhere are:

• Speed matters.
  We switched our donate pages from a PHP/MySQL backed solution to static HTML hosted on Amazon’s S3. The exact same pages served up 2 seconds faster and we saw a 10% overall increase in revenue. Milliseconds can mean millions.
• When your audience changes, run your tests again.
  Many things that we tried early on with no significant difference turned out to be major conversion increases as we neared the election and our visitor base broadened. We tested the color of our buttons quite often and found that no color really outperformed another. Until one day in the late summer of 2012 when we did find a difference. If we’d not kept trying that basic test, we would have lost thousands and thousands of dollars.
• Photography really sells.
  We’d always had a photo of the President on our donate pages, but through testing we found that larger images performed better. Images of the President looking towards the donate form outperformed those where he was looking away. The biggest breakthrough we found was using a photo of the President speaking to a crowd of supporters.
  
  
  It’s impossible for us to know exactly why this one worked better, but our best theory is that it spoke to our campaign’s ethos of being about our supporters and not just one man.
• Don’t give the user choices.
  Every time we presented multiple options for the user to choose from, the overall level of engagement went down. In other words, if we had three calls to action, they would get less click throughs combined than a single call to action. The same holds true to the number of inputs on forms. For every field we added, we would measure about a 10% decrease in conversions. There should be no optional fields on your donate form. If there’s a need for additional data (like why a person donated) ask it in a follow up after they’ve made their donation.

3) You’re going to present the keynote talk at the High Ed Web Florida conference. Can you tell us a bit more about your talk and what attendees will be able to learn?

I’m really looking forward to the High Ed Web conference. I’m giving a brand new talk there called “Human-first Web Design” that focuses on getting balancing organizational needs with the needs of your visitors. This was a real struggle at the campaign and I think a lot of the lessons we learned directly apply to academic websites. Specifically I’ll be discussing navigational structures, responsive design techniques and audience targeting. I think it’s going to be really great.

Updated on April 23, 2013: Human-First Web Design

According to the 2013 State of Mobile & Responsive Web in Higher Ed report, 51% of surveyed institutions have already embraced responsive web design techniques as a mobile solution.

While responsive websites offer a flexible device-independent solution, they do come with their own set of content challenges.

Developing content to be consumed on tiny and big screens (and anything in between) is probably the most important challenge for universities and colleges. That’s why I asked Sara Wachter-Boettcher, editor in chief at A List Apart and author of “Content Everywhere” to prepare an online class on the content pre-requisites for responsive web design in higher education.

Next week, as part of the Higher Ed Responsive Websites Summit (April 23-25, 2013), Sara will provide a roadmap to get content ready for higher ed responsive websites.

The summit is a unique opportunity for you to rally everybody on your team (or your campus) around this important topic. Sara’s session will follow a presentation from Stewart Foss on the top 10 challenges of higher ed responsive websites and 2 case studies from smaller teams (University of Vermont and LeMoyne College).

Whether or not you plan to attend the online summit next week (there are only a few seats left, so make sure you register as soon as possible to reserve your spot), you need to be aware of what Sara Wachter-Boettcher has to say. That’s why I asked her to answer a few questions about content, higher education and web trends.

1) Your book “Content Everywhere” was published last December. Would you say that content is more ubiquitous today than it was 10 years ago? What happened?

Blogs happened. Social media happened. Content management tools happened. This was just beginning 10 years ago: Blogging was starting to take off, Myspace had launched. But today, it’s so easy to publish online that we’re all doing it, constantly. So not only is it incredibly easy for the average person to publish content, but the way people find and consume content has changed as well.

Many organizations have attempted to keep up with all these developments by producing more content: new blogs, social media accounts, news sections, infographics, press releases, etc. As they have, their templates, content management systems, governance practices, and information architecture haven’t been able to keep up.

The result is that many organizations are trying to produce as much content as they can, without necessarily focusing on what’s sustainable, and what’s most important for their audiences.

2) What could the higher ed industry do better when it comes to content?

In some ways, higher ed has the same challenges as any big organization: lots of people producing lots of different kinds of content for lots of different audiences. You can’t do that without a plan, some oversight, and ongoing efforts to stay aligned. But higher has the additional challenge of typically being very decentralized, without a firm hierarchy. This makes it difficult to force new systems, policies, and practices on people operating in diverse, disconnected groups.

But the solution isn’t a centralized, hierarchical structure. Not only would that have its own problems, but it would also be antithetical to higher ed, where encouraging dissent and diverging views is critical to furthering knowledge. What higher ed can do, though, is get better about sharing new ideas with different groups, rolling things out in waves, creating extensible systems rather than rigid ones, and generally taking a less divisive, siloed approach. It’s OK that the humanities department has different needs than the health center, and that both have very different goals than centralized groups like university marketing or admissions. What’s important for content is that there are discussions about the goals the institution has as a whole, and how those should extend and be translated across all content.

Rather than top-down initiatives, higher ed can be the most successful when it uses centralized teams to facilitate better content practices across the different departments and entities. Another big area to focus on is training content-producing staff to think externally, not internally; often, higher education institutions spend more time talking about themselves than about their students. Getting people to think about the content as being “for” their users—be they prospects, students, faculty, staff, parents, or anyone else—rather than “for” their department can go a long way.

3) What role does content play in higher ed responsive web projects?

Responsive design often gets talked about as an implementation question, but it takes so much more than that to prepare for responsiveness. Responsive design relies on content that can be moved around the page—content that lives in modules and chunks that can be combined and reflowed and stacked however you need them. Otherwise, it’s difficult to make a page reflow effectively as screen size narrows or widens.

This means that your content needs to be ready for responsive design: It must be broken down into logical pieces and parts, with trim copy and useful headings. You need to know what’s the most important message, and what can be secondary or tertiary. You need to think about what a user should do after visiting the page. In short, it’s all about understanding your content, your priorities, and your goals, and ensuring the way that content breaks into modules and then displays on differently sized devices keeps those messages, priorities, and goals intact.

4) As the editor-in-chief of A List Apart, you are in a unique position to spot current and upcoming trends in the web industry at large. Anything we should keep an eye on?

Tons of people are working hard on the challenges of designing for multiple devices with varying capabilities. We’re seeing a ton of people interested in improving performance—making sites that load fast, even on a slow connection. We’re seeing advancements in dealing with tricky issues like responsive images. We’re seeing impressive new JavaScript and jQuery approaches.

But I think amid all that, we’re also seeing a call for a return to simplicity and humanness in our work: About designing so that people can comfortably slow down and read, rather than be bombarded by distractions. About bringing focus and purpose to our projects. About not doing all the latest and greatest just because we can. Overall, I see people from all disciplines taking a strong interest in understanding their users—and not just understanding them, but caring about them and respecting them, too. I think this isn’t so much a trend as a realization that the web is now so intertwined with people’s lives, we need to think about what we do there as long-term, not just tactics to promote or market.

Looking for real solutions to challenges with responsive web design?
Higher ed Responsive Websites Summit
Expert solutions, lessons learned and content strategy roadmap to go responsive in higher education
higheredexperts.com/rwdsummit

This is the question that the 3rd edition of the State of the Mobile and Responsive Web in Higher Ed survey report answers in a 12-page document – including results and charts.

This open and independent research work is supported by Higher Ed Experts . When you buy a pass to our online events like the upcoming Higher Ed Responsive Websites Summit or you sign up for our Responsive Web Design online course, you also help fund this kind of work. So, thank you! :-).

Share to help spread the word about the report – and get your copy!

In higher education, decisions are often based on traditions, opinions or hunches. Benchmarking data is not easy to collect, but everybody wins if it’s spread widely.

This is why I’m asking you to share this research with your professional network.
A like, a tweet, a +1 or LinkedIn share will automatically give you access to the 12-page report (PDF) so you can download or print it. You can preview a selection of findings below as well (even if you don’t feel like sharing today)

A total of 174 professionals working mainly in the marketing, communication (43%) and web offices (40%) at universities and colleges completed the third online survey about the state of the mobile and responsive web in higher education from January 8, 2013 to February 15, 2013.

This survey was completed online on a voluntary basis and thus doesn’t rely on a scientifically determined dataset. The resulting survey sample was smaller by 107 replies than the 2012 sample. However, it still seems fairly representative of the Carnegie Classification breakdown.

Mobile and tablet traffic share on the rise in higher ed

• The average reported share of traffic via mobile phones on institutional websites doubled in a year from 4.6% in 2011 to 9.3% in 2012.
• 71% of the surveyed institutions reported mobile traffic shares between 6% and 11%
• The average reported share of traffic via tablets on college websites went from 0.5% in 2011 to 3% in 2012.

Serving mobile users in higher ed? Getting there!

• 68% (59% in 2012) of the survey respondents provide a solution (mobile website, responsive website, native mobile device applications etc.) targeting and serving owners of mobile and other connected devices. They have implemented this solution within the last year in 40% (72% in 2012) of the cases.
• 95% (vs. 74% in 2012) of the survey respondents without a mobile solution have plans to implement one in the future, in less than a year in 85% (vs. 59%) of the cases.

Target audiences for mobile solutions: students first, faculty & staff second

• 85% (88% in 2012) of the survey respondents identify current students as a target audience for their existing mobile solution, 78% (73% in 2012) for prospective students
• 93% (90% in 2012) of the survey respondents planning a solution will target prospective students.
• Two thirds of the survey respondents with an existing solution serve faculty and staff.

On-the-go Goals: supporting campus life, information & recruiting students

• 73% (31% in 2012) of the existing and 60% (70% in 2012) planned mobile solutions have the goal of supporting campus life by providing a calendar of events, bus schedules or maps among others.
• 68% of the surveyed institutions identify information/communication as a goal for their mobile web solution.
• 65% of the current mobile solutions and 75% of the planned ones have student recruitment as an identified goal.

Mobile strategy: institutions are going responsive!

• 51% of the survey respondents with an existing solution have already adopted the responsive web design approach. In 2012 only 15% mentioned using responsive techniques.
• 45% (56% in 2012) of the survey respondents with an existing solution have chosen to serve their mobile web users through a dedicated mobile website, 31% (26% in 2012) with native applications for specific devices.

More but still few mobile web budgets

• 78% of the solutions were developed by staff/faculty, 24% by a higher ed vendor.
• 56% (65% in 2012) of the survey respondents with a mobile solution report no budget.

Looking for real solutions to challenges with responsive web design?
Higher ed Responsive Websites Summit
Expert solutions, lessons learned and content strategy roadmap to go responsive in higher education
higheredexperts.com/rwdsummit

As I explained in my post about mobile and web traffic increasing shares on university and college websites last week, the analysis of the survey results on the 2013 State of Web and Responsive Web in Higher Ed is now completed.

The 12-page report of the 3rd edition of this yearly survey (n=174) will be published on Wednesday, but I’ve decided to share a couple of insights before its official release in an attempt to increase the reach of these important findings.

Mobile has reached a tipping point in higher education

68% of the surveyed institutions have already implemented a mobile solution (mobile website, responsive website, native app, etc.) targeting and serving owners of mobile and other connected devices.

This represents a 10-point increase in a year. And, this proportion has almost doubled since 2011 when only 37% of the surveyed institutions had already implemented a mobile solution.

Responsive websites now the most popular mobile solution in higher ed

What do institutions use as their mobile solutions? More and more have chosen to go responsive!

• 51% of the surveyed institutions have already adopted the responsive web design approach.
• Last year, only 15% mentioned using responsive techniques.
• 45% use a dedicated mobile solution(s)/framework designed and developed for mobile users only and supporting a family of mobile devices.

Looking for real solutions to challenges with responsive web design?
Higher ed Responsive Websites Summit
Expert solutions, lessons learned and content strategy roadmap to go responsive in higher education
higheredexperts.com/rwdsummit