St. Philip’s can serve as a model.
This college’s website could be extremely useful for students looking for information about campus events or important notifications.
The keyword: could.
As it stands, this college’s website is a hit or miss on the information’s accuracy, because the process of updating information and making changes is slow and unintuitive.
To make updating the website easier, this college needs a dedicated webmaster team that is easily accessible to the public.
Currently, each of the Alamo Colleges’ websites is maintained by their PR office. However, the specific process of updating the website varies among the five colleges.
This college’s public relations menu of services states any change to the webpage can be expected to take between one to two weeks.
In that amount of time, they could design a pamphlet with the change, print it and distribute it to each student, reaching a much larger audience than an out-of-date website.
On the website for St. Philip’s College, there is a dedicated help page where anyone can easily access the webmaster’s email to request a change.
Johnny Rodriguez, senior digital media specialist at St. Philip’s, acts as that college’s webmaster.
There is a team of about 12-15 people who manage webpages for multiple divisions, including each department.
Once a request is made, if it is not immediate, it is sent to Rodriguez for approval.
He said although the timeline varies depending on the request, the approval time is usually 10-15 minutes.
Rodriguez is also able to make an immediate change on the spot.
An example of an immediate change is if a faculty member leaves or is hired, or if a faculty member’s office location is changed.
This college lacks the same effective system because there is no clear department dedicated to updating the website as quickly as needed.
Having a slow system of website updates can frustrate and mislead.
This college’s risk management webpage, for example, was last updated Feb. 23, 2018, and the location is incorrectly listed as Moody Learning Center.
Risk management — if you are wondering — is in Fletcher Administration Center.
This college’s directory could also benefit from an update, as it is not user-friendly.
If a student types in a professor’s name, the spelling must be exact or no results will show. Also, adjunct professors may not appear at all.
This college needs to improve its website update time by creating a system similar to St. Philip’s, where each department can quickly get a change approved, and a change can be made immediately if necessary.
