20th Anniversary Makeover: C2C Website
By April Robbs, Ottawa University
Colleague 2 Colleague’s website has a new look and a new URL for the 20th anniversary! The website has been redesigned using Wordpress.com to provide an accessible, and informative website to members. C2C partnered with Emporia State University’s Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) graduate program to accomplish this task with an instructional design perspective. We are excited to unveil the new website at the 2019 SIDLIT conference.
Figure 1. New C2C Home Page
Growing Pains
Johnson County Community College (JCCC) has supported C2C for many years by providing a space on their website for C2C, granting access to a listserv, and facilitating other management tools. It is increasingly difficult for JCCC to grant C2C steering committee members access to the website due to enhanced security measures. C2C decided that it was time to host their own website to communicate with the members more efficiently and effectively.
The Ad Hoc Website Subcommittee was established to redesign the website for the 2018-2019 year. I had the honor of working with David Swisher and Anna J. Catterson. We strove to redevelop the website ourselves as much as possible to save C2C money. We also wanted to make sure the website is accessible. We proposed to move the website to a Wordpress.com premium account in hopes of migrating website content to the new domain. Another benefit was the availability of accessible templates for the website design.
Instructional Design Help
Early in the process, ESU put out a call for proposals for the IDT Spring 2019 Masters Projects. The Website Subcommittee decided to submit a proposal to acquire the expertise of an IDT student. The proposal was accepted, and the website subcommittee partnered with student Qianru Yu to develop the website, and to explore alternative options to JCCC’s electronic mailing list (listserv) and conference registration tools. The team met frequently with Yu to discuss expectations, review progress, and to troubleshoot issues.
A Summary of Site Improvements
A summary of the improvements are provided below.
- ScholarSpace is one tool used to provide an archive of past SIDLIT presentation materials. The new website explains how to search materials in ScholarSpace and provides links to yearly archives.
- The information about the C2C Digital Magazine has been organized on several pages to explain how to submit articles, about the editorial board, and how to search issues. ScholarSpace is used to search magazine articles by keyword, date, or author.
Figure 2. C2C Digital Magazine Search Function
- The Steering Committee page has been redesigned to contain pictures of members.
- The site template and design are accessible and available on mobile devices.
Figure 3. New Dropdown SIDLIT Menu
- There is easier access now to the archives of former presentations from the 20 years of annual SIDLIT conferences and intermittent sub-conferences.
The organization will continue to evolve this website to meet this non-profit professional organization's needs.
About the Author
April Robbs is an Instructional Designer who joined the Ottawa University, Overland Park Campus, in 2015. She strives to promote professional collaboration with subject matter experts in course design in order to produce effective, well-designed courses. April is a VoiceThread Certified Educator. She holds certifications from Blackboard in Content Management GUI Administration and Community Engagement GUI Administration. She also serves as the Kansas Blackboard Users Group Communications Coordinator.
Her email is april.robbs@ottawa.edu.
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