It's harder than ever to be personalised. Universities have been trying to achieve widespread personalisation in websites for years. No one has cracked it. So why is it still a desirable website feature?

Almost every university uses GA. France’s data protection watchdog, the CNIL, has issued updated guidance on the use of Google Analytics following a decision early last year that found the use of the tool to be in breach of European Union law under certain circumstances.

Would you comply with the strict GDPR-based guidance?

Image Credits: Thomas Trutschel / Getty Images

Lewis Wake from University of St. Andrews Digital Communications team recently wrote about how Jakob's Law applies to the university website landscape. It makes sense, but how does a university stand out if you all have to look the same?

JISC has written a thought-provoking article on digital transformation for universities. It's lines like "I hope to see universities breaking away from the traditional academic calendar and the tyranny of the timetable" that not only feel new, but totally possible too. But are universities prepared to mobilise? And what will happen if they don't?

Read the article now: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/what-does-a-university-need-to-be-digitally-successful-07-sep-2022

According to CampusESP, 85% of students' parents (sample size 21,000) desire to hear from universities at least ONCE PER WEEK. That’s 20% more than it was in 2020.But there’s an issue: Less than half of students communicate with their parents about university regularly.

Cleveland State University dropped $1.4m on a rebrand. Let’s see what it got for its trouble: New logo attacked on Twitter - check. A well-paid media provider - check. A “sleek” promotional video with half a million views (but zero engagement) - CHECK. It’s not the most expensive rebrand, but funnelling some of those funds to its website wouldn’t have gone amiss.

In 2020, the entirety of the HE sector pivoted to online learning within days. Since then we’ve tried to take the best of digital education forward. But The Telegraph, The Mail (and about 80% of the UK press) didn’t like that, and despite a lot of signals that students enjoyed the flexibility of online learning - headlines said otherwise. Well, Susan Orr’s report removes all the ideology and (surprise) reveals that blended learning is actually pretty good.

A group of alumni are suing University of Southern California and the online education provider 2U for “artificially inflating rankings.” Allegedly, the University cherry-picked data and used the success of its in-person doctoral students to represent ALL its online cohorts. Again, the ranking in question is U.S. News & World Report but I’m sure it’s not an isolated incident. How many other ranking organisations accept data without question? It’s fascinating how much emphasis universities still place on league tables considering students don’t seem to care. For the last few years, UCAS has reported the declining influence of league tables on student decision-making. On UCAS’s applicant survey in 2020, rankings were ranked in 8th place. In 2022, they didn’t even feature in the top 10 with students having a preference for student reviews. Why the change? 10 years ago, ranking organisations held all the information, but today students can get the same insight from “the crowd” in seconds. Expect more league table revelations in 2023 and significant reform to follow.

For all the hype, you’d expect TikTok to be the preferred social platform for students. But it really isn’t. Based on a survey of 20,000 UG, PG and PhD students globally, TikTok ranks way lower than I expected. Now, this doesn’t mean that students aren’t on TikTok. It just means it’s not their favourite or “go-to app.” Just because students are on TikTok doesn’t make it their no.1 platform. Be careful if you’re planning to pare back efforts on Facebook and Instagram. They are still very much in the game.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University invited its “almost-alumni” Ryan Reynolds to share his favourite holiday movies - which he did on their blog (presumably to crickets.) But then Kwantlen shared the list on LinkedIn and BOOM! Reynolds picks it up and the University gets its name in front of a stupid number of people. Just like you would with student creators, do partnerships with your most influential alumni - the reach on LinkedIn is among the best right now.