by George LorenzoLast week The SOURCE published a relatively brief report titled “What Community Colleges Need to Know About Advertising & Marketing Online Programs.” It generated hundreds of downloads and some very interesting comments.
For example, please see the email below I received from a community college director of online learning. The director’s sentiments are similar to many others in the same line of work.
”Thank you for sending the link to your report. I read through it and found it to be full of very helpful, practical tips. Unfortunately, I did not find that our college is doing many of those things at all. I have a lot of work to do!”
The director added that he would get back with me for possible assistance/advice related to fixing their website sometime in the unknown future.
Well, the time is really now. Having a website that provides meaningful information is a basic necessity. It does not have to be real sophisticated in the beginning – just enough to show your visitors in a clear and informative fashion what you are offering and how they can apply or obtain more information. Keep building on that in a continuous improvement cycle to include many of the other features noted in the aforementioned report, and you are on your way.
Many postsecondary colleges that offer online associate degree and certificate programs face similar circumstances. Why? I don’t know the answer. Is it because funds are not allocated for, at the very least, making their web pages more comprehensible and easier to navigate? Is it because online learning departments don’t get the attention they might deserve from community college IT departments and/or high level administrators?
I have had some conversations with people who know a lot about how community colleges operate and have been told that they often have very poor practices related to accounting and money management. Plus, faculty members, as well as administrators, have told me that online education is still not fully accepted by the professionals who run some community colleges at the highest levels. So, perhaps it is a combination of several things – poor fund allocation strategies, or no funds, and no real support – in which case we’ll continue to see some online learning department websites out there that are pretty dismal.
Other community college professionals have told me that their websites are under development (going on over nine months now with no significant improvement).
That’s all too bad, really. We are not talking about investing huge sums of money to fix a website in order to have a basic, first-phase presence that looks professional and has information that could be the right catalyst for getting student enrollments. I think, depending on how many web pages and features need to be revamped, you could be looking at anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 for a quick repair. Perhaps, however, getting this kind of minimal support is extremely hard to obtain or next to impossible for some community colleges?
Comments, of course, are welcome.
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