TTU eLearning & Academic Partnerships Website Redesign

By Timothy Howard, Digital Media Coordinator

Through the spring and summer of 2017, the website at Texas Tech University eLearning & Academic Partnerships underwent a major redesign. The new website is now live and features a distinct look, a better user interface and more representation for all of the departments. Assistant Director of eLearning Marketing, Melissa Morrow, and Web Developer, Mark Tower, took time to reflect on the redesign process as well as their future hopes for how the new website will benefit students.

"We began thinking about the possibility of a website redesign at the end of last year as soon as we heard there was going to be a new TTU sitewide template," said Morrow. "If there was going to be a new template, then it was going to be time for a redesign of the eLearning website. We had gotten a lot of feedback from several sources about ways we could make our website even better for prospective students. Then when the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and TTU K-12 came beneath the umbrella of eLearning, we decided we needed to offer more information for them, too. We hired Mark in January and with his background in programming and design, it just seemed like April would be the right time to begin the process."

Morrow continued by talking about what she hoped to accomplish with the redesign as well as some challenges that the team faced during the process.

"We needed to provide more readily available information to students interested in earning their degree online. It was difficult to write interesting content that wasn't too "marketing" sounding and was friendly without being too informal. That was the challenge for our team. We had to test out a lot of different collaborative tools. Making all of our very different constituencies have a consistent look and feel was a challenge as well. From K-12 students, online college students, fifty-year-old and above lifelong learners, and academic partners, our audiences are all very different."

Tower also offered his thoughts on the redesign.

"There are university guidelines that we have to follow in terms of color, font, etc.," said Tower. "So to follow the guidelines but remain creative was important for the process. We also put a high priority on getting a design that's visible and responsive across screen sizes and accessible to all students. A very important aspect of the redesign was also having clear separation between sections for our audiences. In the end, we created a website that looks different from any other at TTU."

Lastly, Morrow spoke about the most rewarding part of having the website redesign completed.

"As a marketing tool, being able to share the website when people need new information is very nice. It looks fresher and more inviting to college students. It's a one-stop shop of information. You can go to our homepage and use it as springboard. The social media section is also a really nice addition as well. We are grateful to everyone here at eLearning. We had input from the whole team and it was a very proud moment for us to be able to launch the site after many months of hard work."

See the all-new TTU eLearning & Academic Partnerships website.

 

eLearning Website Before Redesign

 

eLearning Website After Redesign