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 am the main contributor to it. You can review the website here: http://comfaculty.uic.edu.

Over time, the site has become more comprehensive and therefore more useful to staff and faculty. Faculty and staff often reference the site during meetings. It has 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 am the main contributor to the site and I review the content regularly to ensure it includes the most updated content. I regularly review usage data to see which pages seem to be the most used and which are the least used to determine what changes (if any) need to be made. I find one aspect of the usage data especially intriguing: there are sometimes views from places like India and Thailand.

The site is 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 has linked to this site and the COM site links back to specific pages on their site.

Current Look as of 2023

Here is a screenshot of what it looked like as of March 2023.