This month I went to the charming town of Olds, Alberta to attend #PSEWeb, Canada’s renowned higher education conference. It was the perfect setting for an informative conference attended by those working in the post-secondary education digital space, whether in marketing, communications, or tech. Special thanks to Simon Labonne, Digital Content Specialist at McGill University for the beautiful cover photo that captured the Olds College Campus.
This year PSEWeb provided virtual tickets, so that institutions and their staff could attend remotely. Whether you missed this conference or had FOMO while tuning in from home – read on for my impressions.
What Our Team Presented
Do you actually need a website? Getting your digital property to live up to your brand.
The presentation about Evolving Web’s collaboration with Université de Saint-Boniface was a hit! USB’s Director of Marketing and Communications Nathalie Roche and I spoke about how to integrate the university’s values in a new digital environment, focusing on the discovery phase. The challenge was to reflect the brands’ strengths and community identity as a linguistic minority through a modern digital experience. The 360-degree discovery stage allowed us to set up the rebuild with rebranding, human-touch design, and significant improvements in navigation and information access. Evolving Web will enhance functionalities and create scannable layouts with clearer calls to action. This multi-year project will be based on user experience insights of current students, prospective applicants, and other stakeholders while adhering to WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards. Nathalie emphasized the importance of a robust discovery as a crucial aspect of the methodology, which Evolving Web recommended for delivering immediate results and valuable insights for the University.
Revamp or Redesign: Navigating the Crossroads of Website Evolution
Evolving Web founder Suzanne Dergacheva and our partner at Princeton University, Assistant Director of Web and Digital Initiatives John Cloys presented on digital evolution for higher education. While higher ed websites are often rebuilt every three to five years, the future is with iterative improvements – especially when major Drupal updates do not require a website rebuild from scratch. Suzanne shared examples from various universities approaching incremental investments: conducting technical audits, navigating governance, and doing well by security and accessibility standards. The guiding project was the case of Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs website, where continuous investment in the website after launch has kept the website up-to-date with the institution's ever-changing priorities and recruitment strategy.
Watch a version of this talk recorded at DrupalCon Portland
Sessions We Attended
The quality of content was high, as usual! What was notable was the focus on social media strategy in digital communications. Naturally, social media is where the students live and make their decisions, so these platforms need to be carefully considered.
Not for Interns Anymore, Social Media is a Senior Level Position
MIT’s Director of Social Media Strategy Jenny Li Fowler spoke about how Social Media Managers can best position themselves to ensure a seat at the table with their leadership, and consequently an impact on their institution’s strategies. Key takeaways included understanding your stakeholders’ priorities and adapting your data to what’s important to them; introducing yourself and communicating your impact before you need to (for sure not during or after a crisis situation), and always contextualizing your recommendations – you are the expert! Jenny’s guiding principles for conducting oneself as a social media expert, in a nutshell: Know it, Own it, Show it!
How Students’ Engagement Online Can Manifest on Campus
Université de Saint-Boniface’s Director of Marketing and Communications Nathalie Roche shared key insights about how to connect online student engagement with campus life. Engaging students online offers numerous benefits: they spend an estimated 10-15 hours a day on the web, online budgets are typically lower than offline ones, and the digital investment impact is easier to measure. For USB’s small team, which must address a wide range of marketing needs, online engagement is especially advantageous. To this end, Nathalie recommended developing robust media in collaboration with student associations, offering points for student contributions. Gamification also proved effective: online activities can lead to on-campus calls to action. For Université de Saint-Boniface’s close-knit Francophone community, fostering a sense of belonging is an essential goal. Finally, Nathalie emphasized a two-way interaction between online and offline efforts: offline events should generate website content, with a seat for student creators.
Uncovering the Undergraduate Journey from Awareness to Enrolment
Lauren Veenhoven, Digital Engagement Strategist at Wilfrid-Laurier University, offered insight into prospective undergraduates' state of mind today and how it needs to inform the structured user journey, fuelling the project methodology. She described Gen Z’s increased stress and anxiety as points of connection and curiosity that could be met by university content. For example, in the period between submitting an application and waiting for a response, students need reassurance that their materials have been received and are complete. Laurier leveraged this insight to craft the “You’re Golden” email campaign, notifying applicants that the ball was in the university’s court. This extra touchpoint went a long way to reduce applicants’ stress by confirming that their application was in the queue to be assessed. Another great takeaway was the level of internal collaboration Lauren and her team cultivated, ensuring that diverse teams – from the Registrar to IT – all got onboard to contribute to and leverage the user journey maps when working on their digital strategies.
Website Development for an International Heterogeneous Audience
In developing a university digital strategy for a global audience, Negin Neghabat-Wolthoff, Communications Officer at the University of Toronto, spoke about the lead-up to the Office of the VP International website re-launch in 2023. The redesign and development had to fit in one year, so the timeline was tight. Negin went in-depth on their focused yet rigorous discovery, which helped cut down on distinct target audiences (prospective applicants, students, researchers, organizations) and formulate key website objectives. These findings guided the content review: content creators eliminated content bloat by ensuring that every page was directly connected to their priority objectives and audiences. Multiple departments collaborated on data curation and ensured accuracy and relevance throughout the project. The new site fits into the U of T International Strategic Plan and their Defy Gravity campaign for inclusivity.
Let’s Make Digital Smarter, Safer and More Sustainable
The focus of Janus Boye’s talk (Boye & Company) was transforming digital practices for greater sustainability. He emphasized the importance of reducing carbon footprints in procurement processes, highlighting tools like EcoGrader to evaluate page weight, UX design, and hosting carbon emissions. But reducing emissions is not all! According to Janus, optimized web elements such as hosting, videos, and images are also needed for enhanced digital sustainability. Search habits are constantly evolving, and so is the impact on user behavior, with new platforms like ChatGPT and TikTok setting high standards. Janus urged everyone to prioritize user research for traffic insights while emphasizing content quality over quantity.
See you at the next event!
Are you interested in attending next year? Visit pseweb.ca and follow the conference on social media to be the first to know where we’ll be gathering in 2025.
If you’re looking for an event that covers a wide variety of topics, with dedicated tracks on higher ed and digital strategy, check out EvolveDrupal (organized by Evolving Web!). This unique summit fosters open source innovation and digital transformation with sessions on technology, UX design, strategy, content, marketing, higher education, and much more. Speakers include experts from Princeton, MIT Sloan, and others. We hope to see you there!