Brief
Chisholm is a prominent Government TAFE institute in Victoria and among the largest in Australia. The organisation approached Reactive over a year ago to re-envision, re-design and develop the Web site in order to drive user engagement with Chisholm TAFE. The redevelopment came at an important time in tertiary education with a new government policy signaling that acquisition of new graduates is critical to a TAFE institute’s success.
Not only was it a new dawn in tertiary education, but it was an important launch for Chisholm as it was a complete overhaul of their IA and positioning online.
The objectives were to:
1. Inspire prospective students to enrol at Chisholm
2. Position Chisholm as a dynamic, reputable and responsive education and training provide
3. Support current students learning and help them achieve their job and career goals
Some of the challenges faced in the project were that the original Chisholm site contained many microsites which made it difficult to maintain consistent messaging and control admin access across the CMS. The priority was to reconsolidate the microsites and strip all extraneous pages into a more manageable experience and user friendly interface.
Design & Strategy
The process for redeveloping Chisholm’s Web site was collaborative with the team at Reactive involved with every detail. Based on a digital strategy, we started with workshops within various teams at Chisholm, which enabled discussion on defining the organisation and gave direction to the messaging and visual imagery. The focus was on establishing Chisholm as not only a skill provider but also as a career jumpstart partner. To do this, we wanted to empower and engage users with personalised content that placed emphasis on skill areas and courses based on users preferences and profiles.
A standout feature of the site is the ‘dock’, a footer that appears at the bottom of every page and enables users to shortlist courses that they are interested in, look for jobs and enter the student services page. It provides an interactive experience and the ability to keep recent searches all in one handy space.
Solution
Chisholm is developed on Sitecore CMS, and is the tenth Web site Reactive have developed on the platform.
An important part of the site is the search tool, which allows users to filter courses by various options such as qualifications, locations, keywords and the length of each course.
This requires close integration between the Course Information System and the CMS, allowing us to present relevant career content on each course.
We have incorporated social networking into the website by allowing viewers to share courses on Facebook and Twitter and a mobile version of the site is planned for subsequent phases of the rollout.
Results
The Chisholm Web site has been classified by Sitecore to be a best-in-class example of the product in use, as a result Chisholm and Reactive were selected to present at Dreamcore, Sitecore’s annual partner and developer conference.
Although the site has only recently launched, we are monitoring site traffic and applications and looking forward to seeing strong results from the redesign. We’re happy to be a part of Chisholm’s vision for education and to work with a progressive company. Reactive will continue to roll out new features of the Web site through 2011 and 2012.