Evaluation of a graduate school Web-site by graduate assistants

College Student Journal, June, 2003 by Choo Kiang Ng, Phil Parette, Jack Sterrett

Findings

Utilizing a similar reporting format as presented in the Poock and Lefond (2001) study, the findings of this study are grouped into eight distinct categories and presented in Table 2, followed by discussions of each of the general and site specific questions. Specifically, Table 2 presents the ratings of the importance of college or university graduate school web site characteristics, Table 3 presents the listings of expected information when visiting a college or university graduate school web site, Table 4 presents the listings of expected information when visiting a college or university graduate school web site by Admission Content and Environmental Content, and Table 5 presents the results of responses to the survey's site specific questions.

Content

General

As noted in Table 2, content is one of the most important elements of a Web site, with 98.4% of the respondents rating it as important or very important. Content of Web pages can be grouped into two distinct categories: admission content and environmental content (Poock & Lefond, 2001). Admission content consists of elements such as admission requirements, application information, program information, cost, and financial and funding information. Environmental content consists of elements such as pictures of campus, campus activities, student testimonials, and direction (e.g., maps).

Elements related to both admission and environmental content were anticipated when respondents were asked to indicate what type of information they expected to find on a college or university Graduate School Web site (Table 3). Not surprisingly, 91% of the expected offerings mentioned were closely related to admission content (Table 4). For example, when examining items related to admission content, 17.5% of the respondents expected information on available programs and majors, 11% expected information on courses, 10% expected contact information, and 9.8% expected information related to faculty and staff (Tables 3 and 4). Interestingly, only 9% of the expected offerings cited were related to environmental content (Table 4). These items were scattered into 14 items with low frequency, with the highest being expected information on extracurricular activities (n=6) followed by information on direction (maps) and pictures of campus (n=5) (Table 4).

Site Specific

Respondents indicated that there was an abundance of information related to their needs on the university's School of Graduate Studies and Research Web site, as 83.8% agreed or strongly agreed to the statement "The site offers a wealth of information related to my information needs." (Table 5). Nearly 90% of the respondents indicated the information presented on the Web site was clearly labeled and that the information on the Web site was clearly understood, with little interpretation required. Approximately 81% of the respondents also found the Web site to be accurate, current, and up-to-date.

Organization/Site Architecture

General

A total of 99.2% of the respondents rated organization or site architecture as important or very important (Table 2). This suggested that the way a Web site is organized is slightly more important than the content that it provided.