CQUniversity Australia
 

Engaging Indigenous people within Higher Ed

CQUniversity's Office of Indigenous Engagement recently hosted a visit from the Oodgeroo Unit of Queensland University of Technology (QUT), at Rockhampton Campus.

Professor Anita Lee Hong, Director of the Oodgeroo Unit, and Lone Pearce, Project Officer, met with Office of Indigenous Engagement staff to discuss employment issues and best practice models for engaging Indigenous people within the higher education sector, including governance matters.

Full Details…

Spin on web appears good 

More than 200 people have sent in their comments to the University on the redesign of its cqu.edu.au webpage and so-called ‘top-tier' pages launched this week, with 96%  deemed to be positive responses.

Here's a sample:

  • Please congratulate the Web team for me at such a great job - what a wonderful website - so easy to get around and much more intuitive than the current one.
  • It looks like a big improvement. Well done. A web site tells you an awful lot about the business, before you get to the content.

Of course, not everything was perfect or right:

  • I just wanted to alert you to a photograph [of] a student looking directly at a flask being heated by a Bunsen burner. This is not a safe practice.
  • I love the photo of our music staff member Derrin Kerr, but there is a large photo of a violin -- I need to let you know that we don't teach violin anymore.

PhotoID:8695The site was extensively reviewed before it went live.  The "student" and "future student" neighbourhoods were focused-grouped, indicating a 681% increase in usability according to ITD. 

Another release of the site, or update, will occur in approximately two weeks, according to Bill Gonch, Manager, Web & Academic Systems Group.

"Several neighbourhoods where we want to get people to engage appear to be working well... In the Future Students' area time-per-visit is up 41% compared to the previous one," explained Bill.

Traffic is reported to be strong, too, with already 3000 visitors to the new Industries area.

Wanting to have one of Australia's best and most engaging websites, ITD in consultation with individuals and areas throughout the University, started a process in 2008 to cull some 98000 outdated pages and overhaul the University's web presence in part -by conducting focus groups on usability and information requirements.

In partnership with the Division of Marketing and through the University's Web Advisory Group a joint design team reconfigured and redesigned several "e-neighbourhoods" over the last few months to produce the site.