Things have started to roll for the 3rd Annual eduStyle Higher-Ed Web Awards. In order to qualify for this year’s awards you’ll need to submit your site by March 30th. This year there are a few notable additions which have required us to make some changes to our submission form. We have added categories for Best Email Newsletter/Campaign and Best Mobile Site. You’ll see the new categories available on the eduStyle submission form. Make sure you select the right one, we get literally hundreds of new site submission in the weeks leading up to the awards and we don’t want to miss yours. In order to submit an email newsletter/campaign, you’ll need a web version of it available to submit. To submit a mobile site you’ll need to upload a screenshot of the site (how to take a screenshot on an iPhone/iPod Touch or Android Phone).

Nominations being April 15th. The details of that process will be posted then.

If you are company, please consider helping us by sponsoring the awards. There are real time & expenses involved in doing the awards and your support can help us continue this important annual event and keep it as open as possible. It is also a great opportunity to show your support for the community of 4200 higher-ed web professionals represented by eduStyle. There a limited number of slots available.

Now go submit your favorite higher-ed sites.

Just a few things to say about this week’s round of sites. They were overall pretty good, nothing earth shattering but at the same time they didn’t fall flat on their faces. Elon University had a super clean interface and a pretty good amount of information about their programs. They used their homepage as a pure marketing tool and that’s great to see. Too many institutions get bogged down by internal links and messaging being presented to prospective students.

Southern Illinois University Carbondale had the best code quality of the three but I ran into some major user interface and information challenges. Code alone is not going to bring in prospective students, focus on the information then visuals and code should supporting the two along the whole process.

The last site Durham College is actually a site I reviewed on the very first episode of EDU Checkup over a year and a half ago. They have since redesigned completely and the score has risen dramatically!  The visuals were a little shaky at times but the amount of information they supplied for each program was amazing! They were the first I’ve seen that included current student testimonials with each program description. Very impressive.

If you’re interested in having your university (or one of your competitors) reviewed publicly or privately feel free to submit your site. Over half of the sites reviewed on EDU Checkup are by request.

This Week’s Reviews

Keep up up with @educheckup on twitter and RSS for more site updated in the coming weeks. Or if you prefer, an iTunes feed is available so you can get new episodes automatically.

What a great week, the first site Saint Michael’s College really felt dated. The site was designed for an 800px wide screen which makes it feel constricted. There is some movement on the homepage right as the page loads which is really distracting.

The second site University of Notre Dame – College of Arts and Letters really hit it out of the park, almost a perfect score. The design was straight forward, everything had it’s place and is easy to scan. They were the first site I have seen that included an iPhone/iPod icon in addition to a mobile style sheet dedicated to a larger smart phone screen.

The last site, Northwestern College needs some real help removing their global navigation from the left column of every page. It’s so prominent it looks like it’s the navigation for that actual page. When on a program page there ends up being four menu’s on the page, this is very confusing to the user. They did do a good a good job with the designs of the four main promotions on their homepage which was nice to see.

If you’re interested in having your university (or one of your competitors) reviewed publicly or privately feel free to submit your site. Over half of the sites reviewed on EDU Checkup are by request.

This Week’s Reviews

Keep up up with @educheckup on twitter and RSS for more site updated in the coming weeks. Or if you prefer, an iTunes feed is available so you can get new episodes automatically.