What I know so far
The old division page didn't draw much interest from students, faculty, or administration. Nobody disliked it; it just wasn't on anyone's list of Important Things to Do Today.
- How important does the new page have to be? It won't be irrelevant, it won't be crucial...
The division names reflect classes with relatively small enrollments. From a student perspective, it's the English, ESL, FL and History division
- Can't expect people to intuit anything about what's in our division
- People inside the college, though, find our division name the most appropriate
Seems like a lot of the valuable stuff at NVCC is at the college or course level. Stuff in between - campus, division, program - is less likely to have value for students. So a good division page
- should reference material from elsewhere, and not recopy it if at all possible
- should not get in the way of users who know where they are going
- should supprt users who don't know where they are going
- should load quickly, work in all browsers, be accessible and user-friendly, etc.
- should promote what the division wants promoted
- should help the division meet other goals, where it can
- What are some of our division goals?
Some essential features in a division web site would be
- a directory of and links to faculty who teach courses
- a form to allow questions to be asked
- recruitment ads and forms for teachers in eternally short-handed disciplines
- promotion for classes that are in danger of not making
- anything which answers often-asked questions in the division
- anything which facilitates students contacting instructors by e-mail
Some useful features in a division web site would be
- PR materials for divisions and programs
- Tech support for division page authors
- Help for new faculty in the division