We (Tyndale Admissions & Marketing) have decided to defer the public launch of our new website to the week of July 1, 2009. The reasons for this change of the public launch date are:

1. The new public launch date will give us more time to carefully engage the thoughts and concerns of the Tyndale Community. This is especially related to the ongoing discussions concerning the nature of the institution and the proposed marketing language of the website.

2. The new launch time will enable us to have more content ready for the public launch. The various development phases of the website rebuild will not be delayed.

3. We will be able to have dispersed training for content managers to these times: June, September and October.

We want to reassure the Tyndale community that the new website will still be up and ready to impact the incoming class of Fall 2010.

Last Sunday night the 81st annual Academy Awards took place awarding Oscars to actors, writers, animators and other movie industry people. Personally — I could care less — I didn’t watch a second of it!

On the drive in this morning Phil and I were talking about awards shows and it got me thinking about industry awards — and more specifically website awards. There are lots of websites that are there only to showcase and/or judge other websites. EduStyle.net is a great example. Webmasters post there site designs for the community to critique and users can vote with a thumbs up or thumbs down. EduCheckup.com does video reviews of university websites — here is a review of the current tyndale.ca. Of course there is also the webpagesthatsuck.com awards — don’t want to win that one!

Now if Tyndale were to win an award — what would I want the award for? I do like our design, we have some pretty good copy. Most of our recent photos have been stunning. Our php and html code is clean and correct — what about awards for these? Well those are all fine and good — but the award I would cherish the most wold be an award for usability.

David Beyer of the Academica Group said it best when he said

“In order to make Tyndale’s web presence a success we must understand and follow website best practices and this key guiding principle — websites must answer the needs of the users first.”

» Continue reading “Website Usability – and the award goes to…”

A newly developed website (started October 2008) features Nick DeNardis on video doing live reviews of academic websites. Nick, a Web Developer from Wayne State University, has a keen eye for what students are looking for and reviews these websites from their perspective.

Last week I had submitted Tyndale’s website for review. On Friday Nick did a live review of www.tyndale.ca. Websites are scores in three areas – Visual, Information and Code. We scored an overall 88% (B+) with visual getting an 80%, information getting an 85% and code scoring a 99% – hey nobody is perfect

As we embark on a website redesign project, Nick’s review will be quite helpful. Most of the negative comments he pointed out have already been identified as area to work on but it is nice to have them confirmed.

Watch the video below and then leave me a comment. What would you like to see changed on Tyndale’s website? Do you think Nick was wrong on any points? What did he miss?

Today Tyndale launched a new Online Application. (http://apply.tyndale.ca)

A recent study (Engaging the “Social Networking” Generation E-Expectations: Class of 2007 Report (PDF)) places Online applications as the 3rd most requested activity students would like to complete on a College or University web site. 81% of respondents said they would like to complete their application online.

While we have had an online application available for over six years – this application was being hosted off-site and the information gathered had to be re-entered into our database system. This solution created extra work  and left a lot of room for human error. Using a third-party vendor also comes at a cost – a charge for each application received.

Our new Online Application – code named “app|app”  –  is integrated directly with our prospective student database. This means that the information that the student enters will – once checked – be inserted directly into the main database. The database will automatically check for duplicate records helping us to keep our data clean and our communications effective.

To begin a new application the prospective student only needs to provide their first name, last name and email along with which school the wish to apply to. Once they have started their application they are able to save it at any point and return to complete it later. » Continue reading “New Tyndale Online Application”

Well it is April – yup the first day. My Son celebrates this day as his “half” birthday – everyone else just tries to play jokes on each other.

Well when I got in this morning my office floor was completely filled with “Women Alive” magazines. Some were in my drawers and even a few in my fridge… Kevin was kind enough to distribute them everywhere he could find space. My other office mate – “crazy” Elizabeth was more than willing to participate in this – her first ever – April fools joke.

Well I thought I would turn it around on them so I cleaned it up real quick and then acted like nothing happened. They were fooled alright and spilled the beans as to who did what. After a while I let them in on the fact that it all happened the way they planned – it was nice to see the squirm a bit first though

Tyndale’s offerings continue to grow – starting May 2009 Tyndale will be offering a Doctor of Ministry through our Seminary. This degree – like all of Tyndale Seminary programs – is approved by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS).
[see press release]

I have been busy preparing a micro-site for the DMin outlining the program information, admissions requirements, frequently asked questions etc. This site launched on schedule yesterday (March 25, 2008) and has already been drawing in visitors!

As usual this has been a team effort – special thanks to Janet, Karina, Kim, Paul and Phil.

Check out the web site!

Love them or hate them the Tyndale Canadian Geese have returned for another spring here on Campus. I look forward to their return as another sign of the coming of spring! This year the pair of geese that nest in the courtyard have had 6 baby geese. These baby’s are as cute as the adults are annoying I snuck in early this morning to get a few photos.

View all the photos on my Flickr account

You can also view a short video clip here