Running head: WRITING FOR WEB TRAINING

Writing for the Web Workshop

Amanda Umphrey
California State University Monterey Bay

IST522 Instructional Design

Dr. Jeanne Farrington
November 24, 2015

WRITING FOR WEB TRAINING

Table of Contents
Analysis..................................................................................................................................3
Learner Analysis.................................................................................................................4
Needs Analysis....................................................................................................................5
Content Analysis.................................................................................................................6
Design.....................................................................................................................................7
Literature Review...............................................................................................................7
Learning Objectives............................................................................................................8
Test instruments..................................................................................................................8
Delivery System..................................................................................................................8
Development..........................................................................................................................9
Instructional Strategies & Deliverables..............................................................................9
Development Plan.............................................................................................................10
Implementation Plan.........................................................................................................11
Evaluation.............................................................................................................................11
References............................................................................................................................13
Appendices...........................................................................................................................14

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Writing for the Web Training

The California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) web community faces a dilemma:
there is a large amount of content to be conveyed, and very little understanding of how to do so
effectively. CSUSM currently has approximately 15,000 active web pages for their universitys
website, which are maintained through Cascade, a Hannon Hill product. Nearly all of the 15,000
campus webpages are maintained by staff, faculty, or student assistants, a group collectively referred
to as content owners. All content owners are given an introductory training class on how to use
Cascade and how to input content into their departments pages, but are not instructed on how to
make appropriate content for those pages. Many of the campuss pages reflect discontinued outlooks
on web content and have an academic perspective that the more content on a page the better. In
reality, current trends indicate that content viewers best appreciate succinct, easy to skim content that
is objective in nature (Morkes & Nielsen, 1998). To help remediate this issue and to do so in an
efficient manner an online training will be deployed in addition to on-going monitoring of web
content.
Analysis

To verify that users prefer concise content, a short survey was created (Appendix 1.1) to
monitor end-user reactions to the current CSUSM website. The survey was conducted online
through Google Forms and through in-person interviews. Students, staff, faculty, and community
members were invited to share their thoughts on the CSUSM website and answered eight structured
questions and one optional free response question. The majority of the survey was worded neutrally,
though some positive and negatively coded questions were included to help check for consistent
impressions of the CSUSM site and to help weed out spam responses. While the data collected was
not sizeable enough to create an objective statistical analysis, the survey was able to indicate general
trends and impressions that viewers have with the CSUSM site as a whole.

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Learner Analysis
The population of web content authors experience ranges widely from being very
comfortable with to being not at all familiar with the mechanics of web publishing using the Cascade
system. Web content authors consists mainly of faculty and staff members who curate and post web
content relevant to their role as educators.
The content authors know the mechanics of web publishing, but lack knowledge of the
principles of web design and content structuring. This content requires a restructuring of author
schemas to satisfy current market expectations. Many of the campuss web authors have an academic
writing background which does not easily translate to public-facing websites. Instead, content
authors will be trained on how to properly structure web materials, with a particular focus on
application of bulleted lists and content summaries.
An analysis of student responses specified that navigating the content on the CSUSM website
was difficult. Many students complained that the various areas of the site were not mobile friendly,
that the information that was present was lengthy, the text was difficult to skim, and the website
experience was overall not enjoyable. Students were additionally frustrated by out-of-date items
appearing in the campuss search results. One student responded to the free response question that
the campus sites layout seemed to have a go fish attitude and did not stay consistent throughout
the experience.
Overall, the data collected indicates frustration from the student populations site experience
and noted that the worst sites were the third level/academic department sites. Currently, CSUSM is in
a transition phase where the lower-level sites use an old template that does not have much room for
images and is on an antiqued looking beige background. Community-facing/prospective student sites
have a newer template that was widely liked by the beta tester usability group (tested in 2013) and
uses a cleaner overall design, a larger space for content, and more areas to feature images.

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Additionally, the navigation of the two currently used templates are inconsistent and requires the
viewer to relearn how to interact with a page when going between levels.
Needs Analysis
Many faculty and staff members failed to note any problems with the campus website other
than its non-mobile friendly design. The differences in reactions between faculty and student site
perspectives can likely be attributed to the fact that many faculty members are content creators and
structured their sites in a way that made sense to them. This structuring of content based on content
creator logic rather than user needs was interpreted poorly by students. An additional theory is that
faculty members have become accustomed to the roundabout ways of finding information on the
campus websites through long-term exposure.
All of the surveyed individuals specified that they generally skim content to find what they
are looking for and appreciated bulleted lists when appropriate. All of the responders indicated that
they felt the site templates were visually appealing, and everyone who responded commented that
content could be streamlined and cut down.
When analyzing the responses, some of the issues with the CSUSM website look to be due to
the inconsistent templates, which will be rectified in due time. The other quarrels with the site, such
content being too wordy could be addressed through training and re-education campaigns.
Workplace Analysis
CSUSM organization website goals include ensuring that the campuss web footprint is
accurate, up-to-date, mobile-friendly, easily-maintainable, and does not leave the campus liable for
ADA lawsuits. Additionally, programs need to feature accreditation information when appropriate
and give users a positive experience when interacting with the site. Perhaps most importantly, the

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campus administrators wish to attract new prospective students and investors through an appealing
web experience in order to grow the campuss sphere of influence.
To accomplish these goals, CSUSM has developed ongoing workshops to educate content
owners on the functionality of Cascade. Online resources have additionally been created, but are not
in an easy to obtain place online, and the content provided are not maintained very well.
Unfortunately, due to high turn-over rates, many times content owners are put in charge of a webarea for a short amount of time and then are cycled to another job, or move outside of the company
which makes the web content equation an even more difficult one to solve. Many of these temporary
web content authors lack technical skills of how to post content, where to seek resources, and often
times are not completely familiar with the content that they suddenly are in charge of updating.
Content Analysis
CSUSM has roughly 500 different content authors creating and posting information on the
campus website, which is broken down into 213 different department sections. Some departments
have a single content author creating their site, where others have as many as 30 different people
authoring content at this time. When investigating further, the Web team pulled the top five sites with
the most active authors and took an in-depth look at the content that was being uploaded. Through a
qualitative analysis of content, it was found that the more site authors a site had, the more
inconsistent the content was between pages.
Since there is such a great number of content owners on campus, an in-person training would
be inefficient and impractical. A better training solution would be to create an online training through
Learner Web, which is a self-paced training program that can feature videos and other dynamic
media along with completion tracking. To ensure that the many content owners complete the online
training, buy-in will be sought from the department heads and college deans. Failure to complete the
online training will result in disciplinary action, possibly including revocation of Cascade access.

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Fail safes embedded within the training will include a follow-up check that ensures that content
authors are applying the concepts and strategies necessary for proper web content.
The current system for managing uploads to the CSUSM academic website leaves much to be
desired. The large number of content owners combined with the inconsistent design strategies leads
to a web presence which is scattered and erratic. While training every single individual with access to
upload content would be a herculean task, through strategic application of web training, the quality
of content could be improved. When compared cost-wise to alternatives such as a mass training
program or hiring a web management team, improving and implementing training is the clearly
superior choice. As the campus community is made more aware and educated of design principles,
the content and style of university webpages can and will improve dramatically.
Design

Literature Review
While the overall survey-impressions was that less content is more, it should be noted that
one can go too far in creating concise and easy-to-skim content. The Nielsen Norman Group makes
note that if content is worded too informally, it can give an unprofessional impression to viewers
which is not interpreted well (1998). Users continue to read content once the information they are
looking for is found, and typically scan content in an F pattern; starting at the top left of a page to the
right by reading the first line, and then reading downward (Nielsen, 2013). Rather than removing the
bulk of content on a page, studies find that it is better to have good Information Architecture (IA)
(e.g. a well-constructed webpage) and to have a logical layout structure (Nielsen, 2013). In the end,
this proper language choice and structuring on web content can drastically improve readability and
reading motivations for viewers (Nietzo, 2014). The length of content can also be a turn off to
readers and there is a statistical preference for shorter content when given the choice between two
sources (Lex, 2012).

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Learning Objectives
Upon completion of the training, content authors will create succinct and scannable web
content that users find appealing, and which also conveys relevant information.
Content author content will additionally showcase bulleted lists and content summaries
within their rewritten web pages and will cut down word content by 25%.
Content authors will use white space wisely and will have no more than two instances of
awkward white spacing per ten pages within their site.
Test instruments
Testing of the successfulness of the Writing for Web training series will be upon the end of
the lesson. Assuming that web content authors follow the training objects, a measurable mass-editing
of web content should be noted within the administrator side of Cascade. Within the Cascade
administrator panel, a decrease in in hosted files should be measurable as content authors clean up
old content. Additionally the editing panel on the administrator side (panel gives a percentage of stale
content that has not been reviewed within the last 90 days) will be snap shot prior to training and
compared upon training completion. Additionally, random campus webpages will be snap shot and
compared by hand to the newly edited creation(s). Content should be seen being updated, purged,
and restructured upon proper web design and content principles.
Delivery System
The proposed Learner Web hosted training would be a mini-series depicting how to
successfully write for the web. The mini-series would be broken down into short episodes that could
be completed in 15 to 30 minute increments. These episodes would cover various topics such as:
general web trends and what to aim for, when to use lists and infographics to depict information,
white space, and word choice to communicate information in a concise manner. Additional episodes
could be created as weak points are identified and trainings would be required on a bi-yearly basis.

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Teaching the universitys content owners how to structure their web materials in a time and
cost-effective way presents a challenge. Since there are about 500 people who would need training,
instructor-led classroom workshops would not be an appropriate method. On-the-job training would
additionally be taxing on campus resources and would not be suited for this situation (Piskurich,
2015). Instead, implementing a rapid design shortcut through Learner Web, a learning support
system that features interactive PDFs, video, and quizzes, would be ideal due to its self-paced
training and completion tracking.
Development

Instructional Strategies & Deliverables

An immersive Learner Web-hosted training will require hands-on practice and a monitoring
system to make sure that content authors comply with how to properly present their web content. A
drawback to a rapid design shortcut program should be noted however, users may be tempted to skim
through the content without grasping the desired information. To combat this, the best solution would
be to get campus buy-in from authority figures with the power to enforce mandatory training.
Various disciplinary options could be employed for failure to complete and implement the education
goals, including revocation of Cascade access. Additionally, the Cascade administrator tools allow
for user edit tracking, so that the implementation of the learned materials could be monitored.
Deliverables included in the Learner Web training include:

Readings on current web content trends adapted from Nielson Norman Group studies
Statistics on how long viewers typically look at a page adapted from Nielson Norman

Group studies
Demonstrations of appropriate web content and restructured campus sites these will be
created from current site web pages to demonstrate tactics that can be taken when working

within the provided campus template

Module outlining where to find web accessibility resources the campus already has a robust
online accessibility resource center and will recycle these materials and guides to be included
when appropriate to the training

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Encouragement to apply changes to the sites owned content owners will be encouraged to
update or remove old content on their site(s), will be challenged to reorganize wordy content

Content owners will additionally be informed of where to seek assistance for general web help.
Development Plan
Materials necessary to develop for the immediate launch of the Writing for Web online
training include implementing training into Learn Web software, sourcing appropriate additional
readings from Nielson Norman Group studies. Once these resources have been organized and
implemented into Learner Web, this online training will be announced to content authors campuswide through an introductory email. In the introduction email, users will be given three months to
complete the training and apply training lessons to the online web content. Learner Web trackers user
use and reminder messages can be distributed automatically to participants who have not yet
completed the required tasks. If content authors fail to complete the online training within the three
months given, they will be manually removed from Cascade and will have their authoring privileges
revoked. If a content author is removed from Cascade due to failure to complete the training, their
department head will be provided with notice of the change.
Implementation Plan
Since there is no in-class instructor necessary for this training, qualifications can be excluded
for this particular training. Careful consideration however should be given when creating the actual
trainings content in Learner Web and training content creators should be subject matter experts on
web design and web content. It would be highly appropriate for all training content creators to be up
to date with the latest trends of web content and to have recently attended web-related conferences.
Evaluation

Upon completion of this online training, content owners will be evaluated on the quality of
edited web content, use of white space, bullet-points, and visuals, along with feedback for the
instructor(s) in how training might be improved. Evaluations will be given both by an automated

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comparison of snapshot data previous to the training to post-training content, along with manual
inspection of web page content for visual layout and logical content. These evaluations will be given
by the CSUSM Web Team and consists of multiple full-time staff, and several trained student
assistants. Data and user feedback will be collected from online Wufoo forms (Appendix 2.1), which
will have a report automatically generated to outline trends and suggestions. Automating much of the
evaluation process should prove to be a helpful tactic to speed up the manual inspections.
By implementing the principles of instructional design, content authors can be taught how to
properly present their web content. Through a rapid design shortcut method, a minimal amount of
resources would be needed to implement the necessary training. Through this process, the level of
knowledge among university content authors could be significantly improved, and consequently the
quality of web content would follow.

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References

Lex, E., Voelske, M., Errecalde, M., Ferretti, E., Cagnina, L., Horn, C., Stein, B., & Granitzer, M.
(2012). Measuring the quality of web content using factual information. WebQuality, 2, 7-10.
Morkes, J., & J. Nielsen. "Nielsen Norman Group." Applying Writing Guidelines to Web Pages. 6
Jan. 1998. Web. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/applying-writing-guidelines-web-pages/.
Nielsen, J. "Nielsen Norman Group." Website Reading: It (Sometimes) Does Happen. 24 June 2013.
Web. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/website-reading/.
Nietzo, A., Naber, D., & Buhler, C. (2014). Towards techniques for easy-to-read web content.
Procedia Computer Science, 27, 343349. Retrieved from
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050914000404
Piskurich, G. (2015). Rapid instructional design learning ID fast and right (Third ed.). Hoboken,
New Jersey: Wiley.

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Appendices

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Appendix 1.1: Web Impressions survey questions

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Appendix 2.1: User Feedback Questionnaire

1. You feel the content provided in the Writing for Web training was appropriate and helpful
when creating web content.
a) Agree completely
b) Somewhat agree
c) Neutral
d) Somewhat disagree
e) Disagree completely
2. I feel I better understand what is expected of me to create for my web pages(s).
a. Agree completely
b. Somewhat agree
c. Neutral
d. Somewhat disagree
e. Disagree completely
3. I know where to go for assistance when running into an issue on restructuring a web page.
a. True, I know who to contact when I need assistance
b. False, I am still confused as to who my contact is
4. General comments:
(Free response)