Conrad Quilty-Harper, author of the Daily Telegraph article has
commented on Twitter:
Article by @briankelly criticises my university website spending
investigation http://bit.ly/d4tAVh bit busy now but i'll write a
response
http://twitter.com/#!/Coneee/status/4556170362621952
He has a blog at:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/conradquiltyharper/
and is a Data Mapping Reporter for Telegraph.co.uk | Visiting lecturer
in online journalism @cityjournalism
He has been responding to comments on his Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/#!/Coneee
Note response tyo:
'Universities spend "millions" on websites': http://is.gd/hcsx2 Dear
Daily Telegraph, that's how much ANY corporate website costs. Even
yours.
is
right, but: a) everyone pays for university websites (unlike
Tgraph.co.uk) b) there's little correlation between quality & cost
SO here's an opportunity to respond to the journalist.
Brian
Quoting Brian Kelly <[log in to unmask]>:
> Thanks Ranjit (and all)
>
> A very timely article as demonstrating the value of institutional Web
> sites was the discussed at Strathclyde University on Friday. Ranjit
> and I were in agreement that we need to be able to respond in financial
> terms and we need to be gathering evidence which can be equated to
> financial value.
>
> I've written a quick post on "University Web Sites Cost Money!"
> http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/university-web-sites-cost-money/
>
> Note I suggest looking at the JISC Value For Money reports for 2006 and
> 2009 for ways of estimated ROI of networked services.
>
> We also need to fight collectively, comrades.
>
> Have to dash
>
> Brian
>
> Quoting Ranjit Sidhu <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> And thanks for bringing this to my attention.
>>
>> Well, it has started-we knew this was coming-talked about this at
>> the IWMW10 and again on Friday at the Scottish Web folk meeting.The
>> similarity to the government web cull should not be missed-again
>> the stats are out of context:
>>
>> Just to distribute my advice that has been asked by a couple of
>> people of what specifically they can do:
>>
>> To take this seriously and communicate (ignoring is a dangerous
>> strategy) that, as Claire mentioned, this survey is very limited
>> and does not take into account the multifaceted role of the
>> University Website, in particular:
>>
>> Marketing:
>> The university website is an important revenue generator for
>> universities. From our work with institutions I would make sure you
>> emphasise the role the website has in bringing in international
>> student revenue ( for examples see my slides at the IWMW10 ) as
>> even simple estimations will blow these figures out of the water
>> (revenue will be in the £millions) Also, the online use for
>> research into PG courses (again big bucks).
>>
>> Savings
>> Do quick estimations of the savings from online prospectus
>> downloads and application forms etc... this will go close to
>> covering these cost of redesigns (we would be looking at £100,000s
>> over a year). Advantage of this is that they are very clear cut
>> figures.
>>
>> Dissemination of information of current students and staff (cost of
>> distribution)
>> A look at the number of your current students and staff accessing
>> the site will give a clear indication of the amount of information
>> disseminated to different user groups. Instead of doing the cost
>> per student as the article I would look at the cost per visit to
>> the website of current student ie the cost of distributing
>> information to current students- this will be far lower, give
>> better context and will be lower than any offline costs.
>>
>> My advice is fight fire with fire: Revenue generation, savings and
>> cost of distribution is a good start to putting context to these
>> misleading figures.
>>
>> Sector Response
>>
>> Would be indeed wise (Brian ?), let me know if there is anything I
>> can do to help (but obviously this is dependent on the individual
>> organisation we work withs approval)
>>
>>
>> Hope that helps I am working on a distributable presentation of
>> Friday's talk of University Evidence for Their Value (strangely
>> very relevant now!)
>>
>> Sid
>>
>>
>> Ranjit Sidhu
>> t: @rssidhu
>> e: [log in to unmask]
>> t: 07540094760
>> http://www.sidspace.info
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 16 Nov 2010, at 10:20, Adrian Tribe wrote:
>>
>>> Amusing/interesting survey at http://is.gd/hcsx2.
>>>
>>> Questionable methodology methinks.
>>>
>>> Any other views?
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>> Adrian
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> ------------------------
> Brian Kelly
> UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, BA2 7AY
> Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
------------------------
Brian Kelly
UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, BA2 7AY
Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
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