The winners of the 2009 eduStyle Higher-Ed Web Awards, sponsored by finalsite, and CollegeWebEditor.com Blog Awards were announced yesterday at the eduWEB Conference in Chicago. Congratulations to all of the nominees and winners. With over 2000 nominations this year, these sites represent the best of higher-ed web design.

See the full list of eduStyle Award winners.

Thanks to Innogage and Jadu there is video of the event.

Reactions

In the coming months we’ll be posting some interviews so you can get some of the back story of what went into these amazing sites. A few of the winners have posted some of their reactions to winning:

• American University
• Washtenaw Community College
• .eduGuru
• You can follow some of the reaction on Twitter.

UPDATE

• Reaction from one of Imperial College Bloggers
• College of William & Mary

This week on EDU Checkup I only reviewed one site, The University of Chicago on location in Chicago. Unfortunately not on campus but close. The visuals and use of the web as a medium are amazing on the site. The code is equally as good, careful planning and execution has taken place with both.

The Tip of the Day came from placing the javascript includes at the bottom of the page which gives the appearance of a faster loading page. Remember, perception is reality, if you can shave off 10-20 milliseconds off load time your users will notice.

I wish I could say the information on the site followed suit but it just fell short. Like most other universities each department has their own site and agenda. This is great for the deans but not for the users, each link jumps off to a different site and a new navigation forcing the user to re-search for what they are looking for. Its unfortunate because if it were shored up this site would hit it out of the park.

This Week’s Reviews

Stay tuned to the @educheckup twitter account and RSS feed for more site updated in the coming weeks. Also if you have not subscribed to the iTunes feed yet its a great way to get new episodes automatically.