Hi all,
We currently deliver a “Writing for the web” training session created in-house. It is time consuming and resource intensive when our team is small, but it does
give us the opportunity to meet content creators face-to-face and get a sense of how engaged they are.
We deliver a separate “Authoring corporate websites” course to cover the specifics of using our current clunky non-CMS-based setup. Again, this is put together
and delivered by our team but gives us a sense of how competent our devolved authors are and what additional support they might need.
I agree with Claire that an institution’s house style and tone of voice would still need to be covered elsewhere if we were to use an externally produced resource
to cover some best practices.
Pooling resources and sharing info is great, but whether I can get budget to buy it in might be another matter!
Josie
Josie Evans
Head of Web and Digital Media
Web Editing and Digital Media Team
Communications and External Relations
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester CO4 3SQ
United Kingdom
T +44 (0)1206 874297
E
[log in to unmask]
www.essex.ac.uk
From: Managing institutional Web services [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Paul Boag
Sent: 10 December 2014 13:30
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Service Manual and Staff Support
Thanks Claire and everybody else for their feedback.
It strikes me that running regular training courses must be time consuming and expensive. Also do not people attend the courses and then forgot what they learnt?
I was thinking that a video course might work better. That allows people to rewatch it whenever they want and saves repeating the same content over and over again.
This is what I had in mind to produce. Do you think that is something you can see your pay masters paying for?
Sorry to use this group for market research. Cheeky I know. Ill stop now.
On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Claire Gibbons <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi all
We have the usual CMS training run by our IT trainer, but we also have two courses that are (kind of!) mandatory:
-
Writing for the Web (currently being redeveloped for January 2015 to include a bit about content marketing and more about developnig personas)
-
Making Your Documents Accessible
We also have a writing for the web style guide, which is currently being redeveloped as we have a new brand identity, and hints and tips for good web content:
http://www.bradford.ac.uk/marketing-and-communications/web-team/best-practice/
http://www.bradford.ac.uk/marketing-and-communications/web-team/web-style-guide-and-content-tips/ (in redevelopment)
Accessibility has always been built in to everything that we do, so we don't run anything specific on Web Accessiblity (it is part of the CMS training) apart from the documents course.
I can see the benefits of pooling some resources for the sector (happy to be involved) but things like style guides and tone of voice guidelines will be specific the organisation and their brand.
We also have web community get-togethers which (after a brief hiatus!) will be starting again in the new year - these are to share best practice, new ideas, updates from the Web Team, get external speakers in etc.
Socia media sits with a different team.
Hope that's useful.
Cheers
Claire
On 08/12/2014 16:30, Paul Boag wrote:
I was wondering if I could pick your collective brains.
Most of you have a large number of CMS users. You also have a number of faculties, research groups and departments launching their own websites.
In an attempt to ensure some level of quality I am sure you provide material to encourage them in best practice. Material about writing for the web, being user centric, considering accessibility etc.
What I am interested in is what material you provide and in what formats. I am not talking about training on using the CMS, but rather best practice training.
The reason I ask is I am toying with an idea. Each institution has to create an maintain their own set of resources for this. It occurred to me that maybe I could put together a central repository that any institution could use. You know,
little videos explaining how to run an effective social media presence or a beginners guide to writing for the web.
But before I do that i want to know what you guys already offer and where it falls down (if at all).
