University of Michigan-Dearborn

A vision for a new digital future

The University of Michigan-Dearborn had a bold vision for the role of digital, but found itself operating in a survival model. With only a handful of internal staff members to support its current website, UM-Dearborn was struggling to meet the growing digital demands of the University.

The 8,000+ student university engaged ISITE Design to help define a digital strategy and roadmap for the next 3-5 years. The goal was to think beyond a website redesign and develop a sustainable digital operating model with the vision, staffing, content, technology and measures of success necessary to propel the institution forward.

“Our goal wasn’t to just meet the bare requirements for a basic higher education website,” said Tom Baird, UM-Dearborn’s Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement. “We wanted to create new online experiences that would differentiate the institution and help us better connect with our prospective and current students. We believe digital is the future and we needed a plan to get us there.”

Starting with a strategic audit

ISITE Design’s strategic planning started with an immersive onsite discovery process, meeting with more than 100 university stakeholders over a three-day period. The discovery meetings surfaced key goals for the University, as well as current bottlenecks and challenges.

User surveys and targeted focus groups with current and prospective students helped gain a more complete picture of the role of the web at UM-Dearborn.

The discussions also helped UM-Dearborn rethink its approach to web governance and staffing. This included evaluating the relationship between IT and Communications, identifying missing internal roles, and determining how to best support and empower a highly decentralized team of web authors.

The University had numerous challenges with its existing web content management and needed to review its overall approach to web technology.

“We were unsure if we should implement a new CMS, or whether we could make our existing one work,” said Baird. “ISITE helped us to assess the current technology and align it with our overall goals and roadmap. The last thing we wanted to do was replace an expensive CMS if we didn’t need to.”

Creating a digital strategy

ISITE Design organized the findings from the audit into a digital strategy report and a multi-year roadmap for how the University should approach digital.

The report included a staffing plan with the key internal roles necessary, as well as recommendations around content strategy, web contentment management, user experience and measurement.

“The strategy helped us refocus our vision around the needs of the student rather than the internal structure of our institution,” said Baird. “It can be hard to work across the decentralized silos of people and content at a University. This project helped us to look at the overall student journey and better understand how to organize our content, staff and technology to support our institutional goals.”

The report also helped UM-Dearborn realize the large investment the University was already making in digital. While the central team only had a few people, there were dozens of web authors and developers across the University working on the web.

“We were missing a unified content strategy and approach to train, empower and support our web authors,” said Baird. “Our strategy moving forward will focus on both amplifying and expanding these efforts with more centralized resources and team members.”

With challenging economic times for higher education, the strategic planning has helped UM-Dearborn prioritize key web initiatives and have more informed internal discussions on the level of investment needed in key areas.

“We didn’t want to fall into the trap of simply redesigning a website every 3-5 years,” said Baird. “Digital is transforming almost every aspect of the University and we needed a more proactive plan for how to harness its potential.”