On February 25, 2011, Oregon State University took home an award in the 2011 Communications Awards during the CASE1 VIII Conference. It was not just a grand achievement; it was a Grand Gold achievement. The Grand Gold is selected as the best overall entry in a category. The OSU Home Page received this award for the best overall website.
To give some history to the OSU website, five years ago, well and also early 2010, it used to be just an html file, which the Web Communications team kept up to date. Having just a single html file had some drawbacks, notably how many people could make changes to it, and how frequently it could be updated. If the person who did the updates to a single file went on vacation, then what would we do? This was a problem that needed a solution.
Web Communications and the now University Relations and Marketing, in 2009, was gearing up for revamping the whole site. Constituents from across campus weighed in, wireframing of a site was done, and thoughts of development had begun. The conceptualization introduced dynamic content into the site, and gave it a much-needed overhaul into its content structure and presentation. Jos Accapadi, who took the reigns of Central Web Services in 2009 began discussions with Web Communications to collaborate on the development of the homepage.
"Web Communications had done excellent work with what they had to work with, but to do something of this complexity, and to ensure that ongoing development would continue," Jos said, "it was necessary to bring development into the tried-and-true model of a software development lifecycle."
"I also needed to get out of this whole charge-everyone-for-work-done model that Central Web Services established as part of its recovery model." said Jos. "When you try to do that in software development, and especially for core services like the OSU Home Page, people worry more about costs, than looking as what really needs to be achieved. We are centrally funded for the core services we provide, so all those pieces should be at zero cost."
In early 2010, the brunt of the development efforts started. The effort to develop the home page in about four months took literally all resources in Central Web Services to ensure it was achieved for its May 2010 release. This meant different people jumping in on different aspects of development, or others carrying more of the weight in other ongoing projects. There was also plenty of back-and-forth communications with Web Communications.
"Throughout the redesign process, I was continuously amazed at all of the details that needed to balanced and just appreciated the great effort that everyone put into the project to ensure that it came all together." stated David Barner, who was managing the project for Web Communications and involved almost daily in the back-and-forth communications.
"Working closely with Web Communications during the design and development phase was extremely valuable and informative - it made possible a far more effective home page than any combination of separate efforts could have. Interaction with visual designers and content creators informed our software design from the very beginning and we were able to experience first hand the creativity our software was making possible." stated Kenneth Lett, the CWS project lead for the development effort in 2010. "I learned a lot about the power of this kind of collaboration, and have a much deeper appreciation for how a robust and flexible infrastructure can enable award-winning content delivery."
"The software release cycle for Web Communications was something new for their organization, and it put everyone on timelines and really drove items to be completed." said Jos, "They (Marketing) did a tremendous job bringing in all the content for launch day. And all that effort has paid off in this recognition by the Case VIII Awards Committee."
"The Grand Gold is validation of all the hard work the entire team put into the redesign." said David, "Team members from Web Communications, Central Web Services and other groups collaborated well together and it's great for it to be recognized."
For Central Web Services, the Grand Gold award does more than just recognize the development effort that went into producing the page with it’s dynamic capabilities, and multi-user control. It does more than recognize how software development MUST be linked to marketing as well as the partnership between the Web Communications group and Central Web Services. For CWS, it also recognizes the software life cycle put in place for the Home Page to ensure ongoing continuity. People may not judge a book by its cover, but people do judge a University by its website. And OSU's website is Golden!
"Often the technical work behind the scenes of a great web site is invisible, in fact if you do your job right, the end user should never know what is going on behind the content. Earning an award at this level however doesn't happen without a strong technical infrastructure." said Kenneth Lett as he reflected on what the Grand Gold award meant to him. "The Grand Gold acknowledges a site that wouldn't be possible without a great design, skilled implementation and excellent collaboration between content creators, communication experts and programmers. I'm proud to have been a part of the development of the OSU home page, and proud to have our development team recognized for their amazing work."
Now the challenge for OSU is to keep moving forward, and bring in the necessary features on the site to make it better and in step with technology changes. With the partnership between Web Communications and Central Web Services, and that Software Development Life Cycle that they use, we know that change is ever-present, which is a good thing when it comes to the web-face of OSU.
Note: For a full list of awards, you can read the awards book PDF found on the CASE website.
Congratulations also go out to Extension for its OSU Campus Tree Tour Guide and Reference iPhone app, which was awarded a Silver.
1. CASE is the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, and is broken into regions in the US. CASE VIII represents the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada and has 130 member institutions, one of which is Oregon State University. The Communications Awards have various categories for awards.
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