The two sites this week started off on rocky ground. Baylor University had all the right intentions but they fell flat in every category. Looking for a list of majors kept bringing me to a page that listed each school/college and center. It took some active digging just to figure out what they offer. Once I found their offerings the site style had changed and although they were in a well defined list, that list was in an iframe. Scrolling up and down broke the overall use of the web page and I was finding myself continuously adjusting the page. Lastly, this was one of the very few sites I have seen still using HTML 4. Completely table based layout and absolutely no attention to optimization.

The second site, Stevens-Henager College fared a little better. The site isn’t big at all, clicking through it felt more like a complete marketing site than one for a institution. I was intrigued by the main menu drop downs that expanded on click instead of mouse over. To me this makes sense to work but may be a little overkill if someone is using a desktop browser instead of a tablet. Information was very easy to find and I was able to get to a specific program right away. The one thing that bothered me after finding the program I wanted to apply for was the inability to actually apply online. The only way to take a next step was to request information. This was disappointing because it puts a time delay in to making a decision, in that time I could apply and get accepted to numerous other institutions.

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

Site	Visual	Information	Code	Overall
Stevens-Henager College – Episode #265	83	92	85	(260/300) 86% B
Baylor University – Episode #264	61	67	42	(170/300) 56% F

 

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 21st, 2011 at 5:45 am and is filed under EDU Checkup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.