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Case Study: San José State University

Launched in September 2003, the redesigned sjsu.edu website is the result of a project that started in 2001 and required the collaboration of dedicated individuals from on and off campus.

In 2001 SJSU performed a needs assessment and user analysis on the now previous version of the sjsu.edu website. The group held in-depth individual interviews with 38 important stakeholders including:

  • President Caret
  • Provost Goodman
  • Academic Senate Chair & Vice-Chair
  • Associated Students' President
  • CEO, Chamber of Commerce
  • Director of Research Center
  • Sr. VP of Communications, IBM
  • Business Partners
  • Prospective Students and counselors
  • Seven focus groups with 52 participants
  • Online web site survey with 850 respondents
  • Intercept interviews with 48 students
  • Analysis of site usage and hosting environment

In addition to these in-depth interviews the following tools were also used to gather valuable information:

  • Seven focus groups with 52 participants
  • Online web site survey with 850 respondents
  • Intercept interviews with 48 students
  • Analysis of site usage and hosting environment

This discovery phase resulted in the following requirements for a redesigned sjsu.edu website.

  • Make the sjsu.edu "experience" showcase Silicon Valley's Metropolitan University hallmarks:
    • Gateway to career opportunity in Silicon Valley
    • Engine to economic growth in nation's high tech corridor
    • Partner with leading dynamic corporations
    • Continue a tradition of community service
    • Celebrate diversity and international scope
    • A large University with a personal feel
  • Create a graphic look to highlight the dynamism, diversity, culture and community of Silicon Valley.
  • Begin implementation of a content management system to speed the production process, empower university departments, and produce cost savings.

The redesigned sjsu.edu web site went through numerous and intensive product development workshops and technical enhancements before launched. The top-level pages and new hosting infrastructure were delivered by Razorfish to the University in April 2003.

The resulting front-end solution was a web site that has:

  • enhanced user-centric navigation
  • persistent top-level navigation
  • standardized page layout
  • content rich landing pages
  • database driven News and Calendar of Events sections
  • easy-to-use Spartan Faculty Web Wizard
  • complete Section 508 compliance
  • a new digital identity for the university with a hi-tech feel
  • a web-based WYSIWYG inline web editor

 

 

 

The redesigned SJSU site implements a dynamic JSP solution, uses open-source technologies and is hosted on four Sun Servers. Some of the technologies used for the sjsu.edu solution are:

  • Apache
  • Jakarta Tomcat
  • OpenCMS
  • MySQL
  • UNIX

Meeting User Needs
and Saving Money: Strategic Content Placement is Key
"Advisement has come under great control. We have moved from an average of 4.2 advisement appointments during a student's studies as a ChAD major to about 2.5. That translates into a huge number of hours of advisement time saved. We have about 700 majors. Each advisement appointment is about 15 minutes, not counting the additional clerical staff preparation time for each student appointment. So, for each of our current graduates we spend about 40 minutes overall on advisement compared to about 65 minutes previously. That translates into about 300 fewer hours."

Toni Campbell, Chair,
Childhood and Adolescent Development Department, SJSU