Web Design: Creating a Faculty and Staff Resource Site

After the University of Illinois College of Medicine (UICOM) went through a process to redesign the curriculum, new methods of delivering content have been introduced. For example, faculty tended to rely heavily on didactics / lectures that do not naturally promote student involvement in their own learning. While there was some faculty / professional development (I prefer the term upskilling) that took place, I thought it might be useful if we had a website where we could house best-practices and teaching tips.

Process

So, I developed a website to serve the faculty and staff and contain important content like:

• Terms that are used in the curriculum and their definitions and situations of use
• Examples of educational technology that are used in the design and delivery of curricular content and how to use / who to contact to use them
• Specific forms that are used with descriptions of their purpose
• Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility issues to consider when designing and delivering curricular content
• Best practices in the design and delivery of curricular content, including team-based learning activities
• How to incorporate educational games in the delivery of content
• How to create a video tutorial, from the technology to consider to best practices in recording based on multimedia design
• Best practices and guidelines for coordinators for each phase of the curriculum for all three campuses

Prototype

I designed and developed this site and was the main contributor to it. You can review the website here: http://comfaculty.uic.edu. (Note: this website is likely to be decommissioned as I no longer work at the college and I understand plans are to migrate the content to the main website.)

Over time, the site had become more comprehensive and therefore more useful to staff and faculty. Faculty and staff often referenced the site during meetings. It had also become a useful site for some at the university-level, from anecdotal reports.

This is what the site looked like soon after it was developed.

Results and Takeaways

I was the main contributor to the site and I reviewed the content regularly to ensure it included the most updated content. I regularly reviewed usage data to see which pages seemed to be the most used and which were the least used to determine what changes (if any) needed to be made. I found one aspect of the usage data especially intriguing: there were sometimes views from places like India and Thailand.

The site was often mentioned in faculty and staff meetings as a resource to be depended on and utilized. The Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence (CATE) at UIC had also linked to it and the COM site linked back to specific pages on their site.

The Look as of 2024

Here is a screenshot of what it looked like as of January 2024.

I no longer work at UIC College of Medicine and I am uncertain as to the future of the site.