New.Journalism.Review

In November [2010] the Telegraph website ran the following:  Universities spending millions on websites which students rate as inadequate.

The intro  says it all:

‘Universities are spending millions on redesigns and maintenance of websites which students say are inadequate and lack basic services, the Telegraph can disclose.’

The report relies heavily on a comparison of data from responses of universities to FOI requests. Data returned was put into a spreadsheet and this was  followed by output into a neat data visualization. All standard stuff.

Pretty Maps

The interactive map is pretty cool and worth checking out.  I discovered that Bournemouth University spends £3.32 per student on its website – now, that’s a little fact to use down the pub. But look at Exeter  -  according to the Telegraph it spends £23.38 per student. Is that a lot? The Telegraph seems to think so…

Is it now time to be outraged by how much universities spend on their websites, at a time when tuition fees are rising? Or do we accept that a well-maintained university websites is pretty essential in the modern, market-driven, world of HE?

The villain in this story is University of Hertfordshire. It spent ‘£278,094 on a redesign by Precedent Communications and Straker UK, completed in May 2008” and is the  most expensive university website.

Other ‘expensive’ sites include those from:  Exeter University, Cranfield and  Robert Gordon.

All these universities were contacted to explain themselves. In fact, alarm bells should have been ringing at the Telegraph newsroom because all the explanations seem perfectly reasonable and some raised questions about the validity of the comparisons that were made.

University accounting structures differ a lot.  In some cases, website work is highly centralised (in other cases, costs are dispersed through different faculties and schools), some figures include staffing costs (s0me don’t), some figures include cost of hardware (some don’t) etc.

Data from the Telegraph appears to suggest all the money quoted is spent on public-facing sites, but most universities also have internal intranets for staff and VLEs for students. I’m not saying this data is wrong, but I wouldn’t want to be the journalist to check all of this on deadline day.

Apple+ Apple + Banana + Apple + Pear + Apple = ?

The Telegraph does its bit for journalistic transparency by publishing the full spreadsheet of data. But there is a warning here. I love reading a good ‘top ten’ in a newspaper.  It’s great to produce a table of data that ‘proves’ a political point – in this case that the public sector spends too much on web white elephants. But journalists must ensure they are comparing like with like.  And guess what? Sometimes this is impossible and you have to kill a story.

It’s fine to send out hundreds of FOI requests to public sector institutions (that’s the easy bit).  But the figures you get back need careful handling, cleaning and authenticating or else they risk becoming HIGHLY  misleading.  Ensuring that you are comparing ‘apples with apples’ is not easy. You don’t want any phallic-shaped bananas getting stuck in Excel.

Social media is becoming an increasingly important marketing tool for universities. Most young people are heavy users of Web 2.0 sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. It would seem logical that these sites could prove fertile for the recruitment of new students.

The purchasing of banner advertising spots on sites such as YouTube is becoming particularly important for the post-92 university sector (the former Polytechnics) who cannot rely on research reputation alone to bring in the punters. But whilst conducting an old-style, ‘one-way’,  banner advertising campaign during Clearing is relatively low risk, this is not enough.

Social media = risk

It is expected that universities fully engage in the community aspects of social media and understand that online communication is a ‘conversation’ rather than a lecture.

But going deeper and fully engaging with social media sites is not without its risks. The potential ‘damage to brand’ caused by a negative comment posted online can paralyse university marketing departments. The carefully constructed image that universities portray in a glossy prospectus can easily be undermined with a careless post or foolish Tweet.

Even though universities may not engage fully with social media sites, it is clear that their university students post to these sites. On the downside, students are encouraged to see themselves as ‘consumers’ of education. When a student feels that they are not getting ‘value’ (whatever that means!) it’s common to vent anger on social networking sites. This should be expected, although certain lines must not be crossed when it comes to posting potentially libelous comments about individuals. This is becoming a serious problem in all sectors of education. One hopes that universities have a clear policy and encourage responsible attitudes.

‘Authentic voices’ required

Whilst it’s very easy to focus on the huge number of risks presented by social media, there are numerous opportunities. I have seen examples where students have posted videos on YouTube showing funny clips of life in halls of residence and positive ‘reviews’ of university trips abroad. These act to  give a very positive view of life at individual universities and useful online ‘buzz’. Communication is conducted in a language that fellow students understand and it is totally authentic. Any attempt to replicate these types of videos by marketing departments will appear contrived and are sure to end in disaster.

So increasingly it appears that media-savvy students naturally seek out ‘authentic views’ as they search for potential places to study. The Times Higher (Deciphering Code, 19-25 August) states that universities spend huge amounts of money designing slick official websites which present a carefully controlled image of the ‘student experience’.

But the report suggests what prospective students REALLY want to know is what current students think about their courses .Universities have known this for years, but these days it’s not good enough to just include the positive views of a few carefully selected photogenic students.

Universities getting it right

THE praised Bangor, Cambridge, Edinburgh College of Art, Exeter and Falmouth for engaging with social media. These sites often made links to Facebook pages where a ‘warts and all’ view of the university experience could be found.

A separate article in the same issue of Times Higher (All About Me, Dot Com 9th-25 August), suggests that universities are not encouraging academics to blog or create their own sites.

Mike Thelwall of the University of Wolverhampton examined academics’ websites. He told THE:

“One of the biggest trends [in the last five years] has been the move by university marketing departments to insist on standardisation for departmental and personal homepages.”

There appears to be an online battle to control the public image.  Where academics are  ‘allowed’ to blog it is often insisted that they use a strict template with a consistent university branding and use a specific CMS.

This tends to discourage technically-minded academics from blogging, although in many cases academics would rather keep their blogs separate from their official work. Those academics without the technical skills need support, but this is often not something that is encouraged.

Whilst universities will continue to invest in online advertising, marketing departments at universities can be very conservative – only adopting social media once it has been proven effective and with only limited risk.

More ‘trust’, less ‘control’

Clearly, it is important that universities understand  that it is the ‘authentic voice’ and real experiences of existing students and academics on social media and blog sites which are surely the most powerful marketing tool. They should be trusted and encouraged to experiment with online tools and universities need to relinquish a bit of control of access to media. Alternatively, we have a situation where fears of  ‘loss of control of the message’ prevent effective marketing to potential students.

Students looking to secure work experience in journalism should read Freelance Unbound – How to avoid paying for internships. Referencing Emily Fraser Voigt, it makes some great observations about how young graduates must ‘leverage their position’ to succeed in journalism:

‘Young people trying to get their first job don’t have much leverage when they aren’t that valuable – ie valuable to the people who will be paying the salary. And they aren’t valuable [a] in a recession, like now, and [b] when they pursue a career path that is oversubscribed.’

It’s true that students will  struggle to get work in the ‘sexy end’ of journalism, which has been hit hard by the downturn. As Freelance Unbound observes, students need to build up an audience for their work (see: Blogging as a way to build a personal brand online), build a great contacts book (so students must engage with the community), and do student journalism. I also believe we must revisit that debate over whether journalism should be taught on its own. At undergraduate level, it seems far better to teach journalism as part of a joint honours programs (i.e. it must be combined with another subject – how about computing? Or business? etc).

I too would also urge students to have a back-up plan when they don’t get that dream job working for that celebrity / football mag. Perhaps take a serious look at the land of B2B, where many publishers are riding out the downturn (just take a look at the Informa share price) or consider positions in corporate communications and PR. Students leave with a wide range of transferable  skills which are appropriate to a large number of editorial career paths, although perhaps not always in journalism.

Work Experience at Zoo magazine

One of my students has just got work experience  at Zoo magazine (Baur). I was pleased to see that Baur will be paying his expenses. They don’t have to do this, but it’s great that they are doing this because it means that more students from a wider range of backgrounds can participate.

Zoo emailed over a reassuringly comprehensive ‘Guide For Workies’, which outlined the role of the work experience student.  He would be asked to do the mundane jobs of opening the post and making the tea, alongside the more important work e.g.  searching the tabloids for potential Zoo-like NIBS and gossip. But a guide like this means that both publisher and student knows what they will get out of the placement.

I urged the student  to be prepared to make the tea (a crucial role on deadline day, although a job that some students see as being beneath them) i.e. aim to do the crap jobs quite well (just not brilliantly!). But also go in armed with potential news/feature ideas that they could run past the features editor during a quiet moment. Getting even five minutes with a features editor of a national consumer magazine is very valuable and one not to be wasted.

I saw many workies come through the door when I worked at Emap, most of them were students from nearby City University. I always asked about what they thought of the magazine and how it could be improved. We certainly kept an eye on the ones with good ideas and a keen interest in our mag. Emap employed many former workies.

But when it comes to careers in journalism, it’s tough at the start and even tougher at the end. Felix Dennis, founder Dennis Publishing, bluntly explains the economics of magazine publishing in his book How to Get Rich:

“Youth is a further factor. By the time talent is in its mid-to-late forties or early fiffies, it will have become very, very expensive. Young talent can be found and underpaid for a short while, providing the work is challenging enough. Then it will be paid at the market rate. Finally, it will reach a stage where it is being paid based on past reputation alone. That is when you must part company with it.”

He adds: “Just remember the simple rules concerning talent: identify it, hire it, nurture it, reward it, protect it. And, when the time comes, fire it.”  This is the rule at Dennis Publishing and at Emap.

The analysis of websites from a cultural and media studies perspective raises numerous methodological hurdles. When conducting audience research using a particular genre of newspaper or magazine there is a centrality to the text(s) being considered. In contrast, researchers of the Internet can often feel overwhelmed by the vastness and global nature of web communication, which is in constant state of flux and development.

The following observations on methodology are based on research conducted on the levels of user-interaction offered by British local newspaper websites.

1. Knowing where to start…

To conduct an analysis, one must first determine a sample of websites.

‘Given the large volume of WWW [World Wide Web] texts and that these texts are intertextually connected to each other, a critical question concerning textual analysis is deciding on what could be considered a starting point.’ (Jones,1999).

The Internet is defined as being a ‘network of networks’ and it is its inter-connected nature which has proved so troublesome for researchers.

2.It can be helpful to view websites as academic journal articles.

We can view websites as being a bit like academic journals. Whilst websites are not ‘peer-reviewed’ as such, they do share a key quality of a journal in so far as status and prominence is achieved through the number of times a website is ‘cited’ online.

The number of links in to a website reflects its trust, prestige, authority and credibility within the Internet community (Park, 2003). Similarly, a key way that exposure on search engines, such as Google, is gained is through the number of times a site is linked to by other popular sites.

In the past news sites were quite ‘insular’ in nature – obtaining status within the web community played second fiddle to the old-fashioned logic that the way to generate revenue was to keep users on a website. So you would find some news sites where the only links out were to the websites of advertisers and commercial sponsors.

Web producers have learned to be more generous with the number of hyperlinks they make. They hope that by doing so this will encourage respected sites to create links back. It should be noted that some large publishers STILL do not understand this (note the recent statements by Rupert Murdoch regarding Google News).

It is legitimate for academics to use hyperlink analysis to determine a sample of sites to study and to assess potential influence in the online community.

The benefits of hyperlink analysis are highlighted by Park (2003): ‘Patterns of hyperlinks designed or modified by individuals or organizations who own websites reflect the communicative choices, agendas, or ends of the owners. Thus, the structural pattern of hyperlinks in their websites serves a particular social or communicative function.’

It’s possible to use commercial software, such as LinkChecker Pro, to conduct analysis of website structures.

3. The accuracy of user data is forever in doubt.

Those seeking accurate newspaper and magazine readership figures may naturally drift towards the website of ABC for accurate data.

Unfortunately, no such universally agreed measurement is in place for web audience figures. To give a crude example, Google Analytics is used to monitor the traffic to this blog. But the data it produces differs to that which rival traffic monitoring systems such as SiteMeter records.

Large news sites tend to use traffic monitoring services from companies such as ABCe, ComScore or Hitwise. Peter Kirwin (Forget about ABCe; let’s have an old-fashioned fight about traffic numbers) highlights the discrepancies between figures from these rival website data monitors and asks for more transparency in their methodologies.

To put an additional spanner in the works, it’s an interesting exercise to compare ‘official’ user figures with those generated by external sites such a Compete.com. It’s almost innevitable that there will be discrepancies in traffic data based on companies various methodologies.

4. The problems of using Google.

Unless a researcher likes the idea of writing their own software, they may be reliant on Google (or other commercial providers) to seek out websites to study or to search within sampled websites.

Using a search engines in academic research presents many challenges. Witten (2007): ‘Their architecture is shrouded in mystery. The algorithms they follow are secret. They are accountable no one.’ No single search engine crawls the entire web and we have no idea what sites / pages are missing.

Synder (1999) suggests that the problems with using search engines in link analysis are market-driven, rather than anything particularly wrong with the technology itself. He urged search engine companies to become as transparent as possible in the way they operate, so that academic researchers can use them fully.

5. A website is never complete.

With most media the creative process has already taken place before an artifact is published. On a news website content changes day-by-day or perhaps hour-by-hour. Postings disappear, the headlines on news stories rewritten and features that once appeared on homepages are moved to other places on a site.

Imfeld (Salwen, 2005) highlights the issue of conducting research ‘in this period of almost constant renovation of websites’. Unlike any other type of media output, a website is forever changing and is never fully complete.

This blog post has outlined some of the the problems of conducting serious web analysis. It’s not the aim to locate or suggest solutions. From personal experience, attempts to examine techniques used to study magazines and newspapers and them simply transplant them into a web context have been far from successful and could be considered naive at best.

Jones, S. (1999). Doing internet research: Critical issues and methods for examining the net. Thousand Oaks, Calif. ; London: Sage Publications.

Salwen, M. B.(2005). Online news and the public. Mahwah, N.J. ; London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Witten, I. H. (2007). In Gori M., Numerico T. (Eds.), Web dragons: Inside the myths of search engine technology. Oxford: Morgan Kaufmann.

Time to wave goodbye to old-fashioned lecture notes (Independent – 19th Nov 2009) reports on how Russell Stannard, principal lecturer in Multimedia/ICT at the University of Westminster, uses technology to mark student essays.

This got me thinking. I’ve been dabbling with Camtasia 3 for a few months. The software came free with an issue of .Net magazine. I was attempting, with not a lot of success, to create tutorials on how to upload content to Joomla! (a CMS) for my students. Camtasia is a screencast tool i.e. it records everything that you do on your PC screen in video format and you can also record an audio commentary. This is useful for a number of purposes, such as those listed on the official Camtasia site.

But after reading the article in The Indie, I’ve found it’s also very useful for providing feedback on journalism assignments. Students submit assignments electronically using our Moodle-based VLE. I then get a student’s Word file on screen and edit it, whilst simultaneously giving a live commentary on the changes that I’m making. This is like giving a student their own personal tutorial. The file produced by Camtasia is then saved, compressed in size and can be emailed to the student for viewing.

The system has worked so well that I have invested in a newer version of Camtasia – 6 is the latest edition. I also bought a decent quality Logitech USB desktop microphone

Pros of using Camtasia:

1. An interesting way to deliver feedback: Getting students to read any feedback delivered in the traditional way (i.e. hand written corrections to their scripts) can be a problem – they normally just want to see the grade! This is a particular issue for weaker students who can sometimes feel intimidated when they see pages and pages of corrections. Of course, it’s the weaker students who really need to see (and understand) their feedback.
2. It’s quicker than correcting scripts the old-fashioned way: It takes ages to mark 60 or 80 scripts, so I always have one eye on the clock. I’m sure that I’m not the only tutor who times how long it takes them to mark each paper. If a bit of software doesn’t improve my productivity – it’s gone!
3. You can go into a lot more detail: It’s like a face-to-face tutorial. You can provide a lot more explanation verbally than you can using written comments. This is really handy for the weaker students. You can also ‘zoom’ in and ‘highlight’ individual paragraphs to provide detailed comments.
4. Good feedback from students: I have done a really small test sample, but I’ve had some very positive feedback from students.

Cons: The files must be compressed quite heavily if you are going to send them via email and this can take up to a minute or so to complete. I move on to reading the next assignment, whilst Camtasia is busily compressing away.

Camtasia 3 is widely available for free, but it doesn’t provide brilliant compression. It’s worth getting hold of a new-ish version. Feedback has to be logged and verified by external examiners, so sometimes it’s best to have it in hard copy format.

Cost: Camtasia 6 costs $299 or around £180. But there is a free web-based screencast technology called ScreenToaster that seems to do a similar job, although I’ve not tried this.

I am keen to find out who else is using Camptasia or similar screencast software.