EWU Graduate Programs Website Revamp: A Community Engagement Opportunity

Presented by Sarah A. O’Hare, MA, Eastern Washington University Reported by Nicole Sloan, MA, University of Florida

When Sarah O’Hare started working in the Graduate Programs office at Eastern Washington University, one of her first assignments was to revamp the Online Accelerated Orientation Tool. She explained that the tool is designed to better assist students in the online accelerated program and help them understand they were enrolled in a special student program that differs in operation from others at EWU. In preparing for the task, Sarah realized what she termed a “simultaneous opportunity” to provide some much-needed TLC to the existing graduate website.

As a Washington State certified librarian, she explained how she combined her knowledge and skillset with tools from librarianship to help build a connected community of stakeholders to guide her project and the website revamp. The session focused on the website.

Sarah first identified the common challenges facing students in the Online Accelerated Program, which meant communicating with financial aid, graduate programs, records and registration, and academic partners. This naturally led to creating a plan to revise the website. The website revision steps included Sarah building a community with stakeholders across campus that followed this basic sequence (by no means complete):

• URL map;

• wireframes (paper & digital, which are drawings that can help your web team visualize you intentions for your website. Be specific and intentional.);

• revisiting with campus stakeholders to fill in the fields;

• revisiting with web design team to check for component quality (have intelligent conversations with your IT and web design teams. Always trust the experts.);

• Web design team builds scaffolding in WordPress;

• Insert content in WordPress;

• Review with graduate programs team;

• Review with campus stakeholders; ask for additional edits;

• Review with soft launch; and

• hard launch; regular maintenance plan

To facilitate a high level of community engagement Sarah used tools from librarianship including:

• The Harwood Institute Community Engagement Model: Community Conversations (available for free online);

• creating the space and using necessary tools to cultivate reflective workplace habits; and

• defining and reimagining your campus as your community.

She suggested such tools can be employed in many areas of GEM including:

• problem solving issues with you community;

• onboarding new employees;

• reconnecting with your campus partners as a community; or

• starting a new job and wanting to come to understand the community landscape and context quickly.

As a takeaway from this upbeat and well-presented session, Sarah shared her presentation and several handouts including: Ask Exercises, Community Conversations Questions, Harwood Strategy Chart, and Sarah’s Annual Goals Sheet. n