Webinar hosted by GatherContent on Thursday 11 April 2019 addressing higher education websites, web estates and digital content creation and management. Sets out evolution of complex digital environments, the resultant risks and a framework for managing and resolving complexity.

1. The State of Higher Education Digital Environments
April 2019Paul Bradley

2. AGENDA
April 2019
1. What are higher education digital environments?
2. Why should we understand their state or condition?
3. What can we do about what we find?

3. The State of Higher Education Digital Environments
Worldwide
21,320
Oceania
70
Asia
9,750
Europe
2,500
North
America
5,000
Latin
America
2,750
Africa
1,250
3
Number of Post-Secondary/Higher
Education Institutions Worldwide

4. Asia
56%
Oceania
69%
Europe
85%
North
America
88%
Latin
America
68%
Africa
37%
4
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Proportion of Population with Internet
Access Worldwide 2018

5. • University faculties and departments enjoy operational, financial and
administrative autonomy
• This pattern of behaviour was and is replicated in building websites and carrying
out digital marketing and communications activities
5
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Individual Institutions Are Complex Digital
Ecosystems
ed.ac.uk
one
three four
two
five
mcmaster.ca
one
three four
two
five
1,700 ± sub-sites 800 ± sub-sites
University of Edinburgh McMaster University

6. • Universities or departments within universities started to go ‘digital’ from 1992 onwards
• Mainly, but not exclusively, computer science or IT initiated projects
• Developed, operated and managed independently
6
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments How Did We Create Such Complexity?
University of York
Institut national de
physique nucléaire et de
physique des particules
University of Illinois at Urbana–
Champaign

7. • From IT web projects/experiments to marketing and communications channel
• From externally-facing web pages to ecosystems of intranets, LMSs, CRM and
internal/external websites
• To digital environments
7
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Evolution from Data Repository to
Communications Channels
1990-2000s
1990s-2000s 2019

8. • Added other non-text content over time
• At first on-site, increasingly held off-site
• Expanded beyond websites to mobile only content/interactions
8
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Digital Content has Overflowed the Internal
Structures
images
audio
social
media
video
mobile
apps

9. • Higher education content creation largely autonomous
• Varying approaches to policy setting and governance
• Institution-specific oversight and enforcement of brand, style and content
tone/voice
9
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Technological Exuberance Has Been
Matched by Content Decentralisation
Student, Sports
and other groups
Faculty Marketing
& Communications
Marketing and
Communications
Main website
& CMS
Faculty
website &
own CMS
Social Media Podcasts
Social Media
YouTube
Videos

10. • Reasonable assertion that most higher education digital environments operate as
if they were driven by agile methodologies, but without the focus on delivering
value to end users
10
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Stumbled Into Agile Content Development
Without Formal Methodology Approach
Content
Ideas
Plan
Create
Publish
Measure

11. 11
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments The Sum of All the Foregoing Has Led Us
to Where We Are Now
Infrastructure
Content management
Content presentation
Caching
CDNs
Databases
Database Managers Load Balancers
Media Servers Network Storage
Web Servers
Comment Systems
Web Analytics
Captchas
CRM
Development Tools
Content Editors JavaScript Frameworks
Live Chat
Marketing Automation
Payment Processing Mobile Frameworks
Tag Managers Web Frameworks
SEO Add-ins Widgets

12. • In the migration from ITS to Marketing and Communications IT has held onto
infrastructure
• Complex inter-relationship of hardware and software
• Emphasis on security, risk mitigation and stability
12
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Need to Understand the Layers to Improve
Our Solutions To The Issues
Web Servers
Web Server OSes
Performance Managers
CDNs

13. • Content Management Systems have simplified storing, formatting and presenting
content
• Expanding scope of CMSs to digital marketing platforms has increased complexity
• Environment is made more complex by development and JavaScript frameworks
13
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Development Efforts Focus on The Middle
Layer
Frameworks
CMSs
JS Frameworks

14. 14
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments The Top Layer Defines the User Experience
And Whether It All Appears To Work
• User experience layer is now a mix of ‘customer experience’, marketing, interaction
and analytics: Marketing Technology
• Increasing use of Chatbots layered on top of existing JavaScript tags
• Marketing and communications largely controls this layer’s configuration
Tag Managers
Ad Networks
Analytics
Widgets
Chatbots
Marketing Platforms
Performance Verification

15. • Main websites recognise that higher education has been ‘marketised’
• Institutions ‘compete’ for students
• Students need help making choices
• Main websites also try to address other audiences and their ‘tasks’
• Current students
• Alumni
• Faculty
• Staff
• Media
• Research Partners
• Industry Partners
• Corporate Services
• Faculty/Department/Research Centres
• Publicise research
• Publicise staff
• Recruit post-graduate students
15
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Why Are We Building All These Websites?

16. • Largely qualitative and descriptive to this point
• Let’s put some context and numbers around the case we’ve set out
16
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Let’s Put Numbers On the Descriptions
How complex have we made
these digital environments?
Marketisation
Governance
Technology

17. AGENDA
April 2019
1. What are higher education digital environments?
2. Why should we understand their state or condition?
3. What can we do about what we find?

18. UK higher education homepage images
18
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments On The Surface That Technology Stack
Produces Similar Looking Websites
Canadian higher education homepage images

19. 19
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments And These Websites Try To Say A Lot on
Their Homepages
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
100 500 900 1,300 1,700 2,100 2,500 2,900 3,300 3,700 4,100 4,500 4,900 5,300
NumberofSiteswithWordCount
Number of Words on Home Page for Main .ac.uk Domain
UK Universities:
Website Homepage Word Count Distribution
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
100 400 700 1,000 1,300 1,600 1,900 2,200 2,500 2,800 3,100 3,400 3,700 4,000 4,300
NumberofSiteswithWordCount Number of Words on Home Page for Main .edu Domain
US 4-year Universities:
Website Home page Word Count
90%
Mean
1,020
90%
Mean
1,104

20. 20
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments How big and how complex are higher
education digital environments?
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
10,000 100,000 500,000 2,000,000
UK | Universities:
Estimated Number of Web Pages by Quartile
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
100,000 500,000 1,000,000 12,000,000
US | 4-year Universities:
Estimated Number of Web Pages by Quartile

21. 21
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Words, images and lots of PDFs
2
5
273
1,466
- 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 1,600
Video
Audio
Content-rendering
Image
Number of files found per thousand web pages
Contentcategories
US and UK webpage embedded content type occurence per 1,000 pages
n=316
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
20,000 100,000 250,000 500,000 8,000,000
US | 4-year Universities:
Estimated Number of PDF Files
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
10,000 25,000 50,000 100,000
UK | Universities:
Estimated Number of PDF Files
249
6
3
1
161
7
2
0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
PDF
Documents
Presentations
Spreadsheets
Number of Links to Content Files per 1,000 Web Pages
ContentCategories
US and UK Universities :
Number of Links to Content Files per 1,000 Webpages
UK Universities
US Universities

22. 22
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments On A Number of Measures HEI Websites
Stack Up Well Versus Others
0.00
2.00
4.00
6.00
8.00
10.00
12.00
14.00
16.00
University Websites Football Club Websites
Complexity(Links/WebPage)
Page Complexity : Number of Links/Page
3.26
2.69
0.00
5.00
10.00
15.00
20.00
25.00
30.00
35.00
40.00
45.00
University Websites Football Club Websites
NumberofBrokenLinks/100pages
Number of Broken Links per 100 pages
6.93
1.93
0.00
5.00
10.00
15.00
20.00
25.00
30.00
University Websites Football Club Websites
NumberofBrokenLinks/100Pages
Number of Broken Resources per 100 pages
0.69 0.85
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
0 to 5 6 to 10 11 to 15 16 to 20 21 to 25 26 to 30 31 to 35
Distribution of Number of Broken Links per 100 web Pages

23. 23
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments We’ve Incrementally Built Ourselves
Complex Digital Ecosystems

24. 24
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments PWC Risk Profile for UK Universities - 2018

25. 25
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Typical Website/Digital Environment Risk
Identification
Typical Risks Description
Business Continuity
Site ownership unclear or unknown. In the event of operational issues the site may
go out of service with an unknown time to repair or restore.
Content Quality
With autonomous content creation and editing, content may not adhere to
institutional accessibility and usability policies or adhere to editorial guidelines
leading to reputational risk.
Cost Inefficiencies
Decentralised decision making increases the likelihood of website development,
design, hosting arrangements being duplicated and thus less cost effective.
Impediments to Strategic Objectives
Most institutions are seeking to enhanced the user experience for their primary
audiences and to ensure UX decision are fully data informed. Complex digital
environments can compromise meeting these types of strategic objectives.
Information Security
Complexity can lead to uncertainty regarding website hosting arrangements and
technical environments introducing risks of information loss or unauthorised
network access.
Privacy Legislation Compliance
Widespread cookie, third-party JavaScript and forms use across digital
environment makes GDPR and other privacy compliance more difficult.
User Experience
Inconsistent application of information architecture, accessibility and design
guidelines degrades the overall user experience, decreases end-user task
completion and increases user attrition.
Website Publishing Controls
In the absence of appropriate workflow controls inaccurate and out-of-date
information may be published potentially placing UK institutions in breach of
legislative or regulatory requirements: CMA or website accessibility.

26. 3 Main Risk Categories
26
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Complexity Elevates Risk
• Financial
• Legal and Regulatory
• Security
75
85
95

27. Financial Risk Components
• Content Quality
• Broken links
• image tagging
• Performance
• Page loading speed
• Social Media
• Social media networks used
• Number of independent accounts
• User Experience
• Mobile friendly
27
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Financial Risks – Lose Revenue or Incur
Unnecessary Costs
75

28. Legal and Regulatory Risk Components
• Website Accessibility
• Information Architecture
• WCAG2.1 compliance
• Page structure
• Privacy
• GDPR compliance
• Cookie Use
• 3rd party JavaScript
• Information Disclosure
• CMA compliance
• Legal, privacy and copyright statements
28
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Legal & Regulatory Risks – Exposed To
Legal or Other Sanctions
85

29. Security Risk Components
• Connection Security
• HTTPS implementation
• Certificate control
• Access Security
• Server signatures
• CMS access and control
29
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Security Risks – Universities are Attractive
Sites to Attack
95

30. AGENDA
April 2019
1. What are higher education digital environments?
2. Why should we understand their state or condition?
3. What can we do about what we find?

31. Working hypothesis
• At this point established that digital ecosystems are messy
• This increases risk and real costs to an institution
• Reduces effectiveness of marketing and communications
31
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments We’ve Identified The Issues. What Are The
Solutions?

32. Four Components to Managing Complex Digital Environments
32
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Four Building Blocks
Agile
Development
Digital
Governance
Integrated
Content Policies
Monitor, Measure
+ Analyse

33. Agile Development Approach
• “continuous improvement through incremental change
based on creating value for end users”
• Apply this approach to technical development exercises
• Apply to implementing marketing technology
• Apply to adding digital content
33
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Agile Development

34. Infrastructure
Content management
Content presentation
Caching
CDNs
Databases
Database Managers Load Balancers
Media Servers Network Storage
Web Servers
Comment Systems
Web Analytics
Captchas
CRM
Development Tools
Content Editors JavaScript Frameworks
Live Chat
Marketing Automation
Payment Processing Mobile Frameworks
Tag Managers Web Frameworks
SEO Add-ins Widgets
AG I L E D EV ELOPM ENT
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Agile Development

35. Digital Governance
• “is a framework to establish roles, accountability and
decision-making authority for an institution’s digital
presence: internal and external websites, mobile
applications, social networks and any other digital
channels.”
• Often summarised as: ‘who decides, who decides’
• In the higher education setting digital governance is
particularly important because (a) activities are
decentralised (b) faculty have can have authority without
accountability
35
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Digital Governance
Authority
AccountabilityRoles

36. Infrastructure
Content management
Content presentation
Caching
CDNs
Databases
Database Managers Load Balancers
Media Servers Network Storage
Web Servers
Comment Systems
Web Analytics
Captchas
CRM
Development Tools
Content Editors JavaScript Frameworks
Live Chat
Marketing Automation
Payment Processing Mobile Frameworks
Tag Managers Web Frameworks
SEO Add-ins Widgets
AG I L E D EV ELOPM ENT
D I G I TA L G OV ERNA NC E
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Agile + Digital Governance

37. Integrated Content Policies
• Higher education websites are continuously updated with
text, images, file links, audio links and links to content on
social media
• For content to work for its intended audiences content
editors need “rules” about producing effective content
• Content policies can be implemented and enforced
manually, through workflow solutions or via integrated
services such as GatherContent.
37
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Integrated Content Policies

38. Infrastructure
Content management
Content presentation
Caching
CDNs
Databases
Database Managers Load Balancers
Media Servers Network Storage
Web Servers
Comment Systems
Web Analytics
Captchas
CRM
Development Tools
Content Editors JavaScript Frameworks
Live Chat
Marketing Automation
Payment Processing Mobile Frameworks
Tag Managers Web Frameworks
SEO Add-ins Widgets
AG I L E D EV ELOPM ENT
D I G I TA L G OV ERNA NC E
INTEGRATEDCONTENTPOLICIES
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Agile + Digital Governance + Content
Policies

39. Monitor, Measure and Analyse
• Install and implement Google Analytics to understand on
page activity and end user behaviour
• Monitor overall digital environments to find and eliminate
barriers to user experience, performance etc.
• Identify success measures and analyse and report these in
ways your audience can understand
39
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Monitor, Measure and Analyse

40. Infrastructure
Content management
Content presentation
Caching
CDNs
Databases
Database Managers Load Balancers
Media Servers Network Storage
Web Servers
Comment Systems
Web Analytics
Captchas
CRM
Development Tools
Content Editors JavaScript Frameworks
Live Chat
Marketing Automation
Payment Processing Mobile Frameworks
Tag Managers Web Frameworks
SEO Add-ins Widgets
AG I L E D EV ELOPM ENT
D I G I TA L G OV ERNA NC E
INTEGRATEDCONTENTPOLICIES
MONITOR,MEASUREANDANALYSE
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments Agile + Digital Governance + Content
Policy + Monitoring

41. Paul Bradley
Email: paul.bradley@eqafy.com
Twitter: @OnCoFo
Blog: Show Me The Data
Website: eQAfy.com
LinkedIn: Paul Bradley
Phone: +1 416 464 9771 | +44 20 3290 3575
The State of Higher Education Digital Environments