It’s impossible to have picked up a newspaper or sat in front of the television during the last 12 months and not realised that there are great changes afoot in higher education.

Aggregate student numbers in the UK have doubled in 20 years with a downturn in the national economy prompting a review of higher education funding. In England the balance of funding is going to change – with much of the cost of courses switching from the taxpayer to the student.

Like many industry professionals I’ve worried how the changes will affect me personally – how will my role change and what challenges will I face in trying to fulfil it?

At the start of this month I attended the CASE Europe Annual Conference which was held in my hometown of Manchester.

‘The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) is a professional association serving educational institutions and the advancement professionals who work on their behalf in alumni relations, communications, development, marketing and allied areas.’

As a group of professionals we are all interested in furthering higher education, promoting its benefits and aiding our institutions in recruiting the best students and getting the most funding possible.

Having attended the conference in Glasgow last year I was impressed with the level of knowledge of the speakers. They range from vice-chancellors, to marketing directors, to one of the founders of Facebook.

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Our exciting new mobile site

This month, we’re really excited about our first leap into the world of mobile.

After lots of hard work, we’re almost ready to launch our first version of Mobile Bath. While we prepare for our official launch, those wanting a sneak preview can now view the mobile site and give feedback on their experiences.

Our exciting new site allows Apple iOS and Android users to view a campus map, search our people directory and check the availability of on-campus PCs. You can even check out the latest campus news and watch our fantastic University YouTube videos.

This is just the start of our work for mobile devices. Over the coming months, we’re hoping to add lots of exciting new features. We’re also planning to use the site to help users during special events, such as open days.

As it’s still under testing, mobile users will not be automatically redirected to the mobile site. However, it’s really easy to find – just open your mobile browser and navigate to m.bath.ac.uk .

Tell us what you think of our new site by leaving feedback. You can do this by clicking the link on our mobile homepage. We’d be very grateful!

If you want to find out more about our work with mobile devices, keep an eye on our blog. We’ll be posting regularly about new features as they become available.

Later today I’ll leave the University and my role as Head of Web Services without knowing exactly when I’ll return. After 3 1/2 years here I am taking some time out to focus on a new role… motherhood (to twins)!

It’ll be a shock to go from managing and directing to being managed and directed by two tiny babies but I am excited about everything that is to come and confident I am leaving the team in very capable hands.

Naturally with any departure a period of change follows. I am handing over the reins to Phil Wilson who will become the Head of Web Services from Monday and Tom Natt who will step into Phil’s Web Development Manager shoes.

We’re also recruiting a Project Manager to fill in the gaps whilst I’m away.

Alongside this we’ll also be welcoming our new Web Content Editor, Sophie Ottaway, to the team on Monday and we hope to have a new Web Content Manager and Web Supporter joining us shortly.

So lots of big changes to the Web Services team!

Before I leave though I just wanted to say something about the existing team…

In the last 3 1/2 years we’ve transformed ourselves from a technical service provision to a Digital Marketing team. We’ve not only been overhauling the website but changing the culture at the University and ensuring ‘the web’ is seen and handled in a different way – as the primary Marketing/Communications tool it is.

I’m proud of all that we’ve achieved so far and feel lucky to have had such a passionate and engaged team to work with. There are still too many Star Wars references, they are far too excited about lego and the geekometer is still higher than I would like but I shall miss them all and miss being part of the projects that are set to come to fruition in the coming months.

Goodbye for now.

As you can tell from the fact we’re hiring new people there are exciting times ahead for Web Services!

Since we’re also half-way through 2011 I thought it would be a good chance to look back on what we’ve achieved so far this year.

We began by delivering the online Visual Identity and applying it to our Study and Research sites. Since then we’ve also applied it to newly-developed sites for our Alumni and Team Bath as well as the top-level pages for Faculties & Departments, Business and our graduations ceremonies sites. If you look around the Team Bath site you’ll find links to our new online store which can be used for buying membership to exercise classes as well as more traditional items.

The University homepage was relaunched following a significant period of prototyping, mockups, user testing and feedback gathering. This has seen several changes in audience behaviour that we were hoping for, as well as being a much better shop window for the University. The experience was extremely educational so we should probably write a bit more detail about the process in another blog post!

More recently we’ve released a new area for international students which gathers together the information specifically for those applicants and also uses the new Visual Identity to bring it in line with the rest of the Study site. It also uses geo-location to direct visitors based in other countries directly to the most relevant pages.

Virtual Tours showing the accommodation that we have on- and off-campus are now available and should there (heaven forbid) be a broken link anywhere then you’ll get to see our new 404 page (again, changes were based on detailed analysis of usage of our old 404 page).

Whilst all those changes are readily available to site visitors, the early part of the year also saw a complete overhaul of our CMS training courses and an audit of 100 of our more internally-facing sites!

All of this is really just a brief overview of some the bigger pieces of work we’ve delivered; alongside this is all the day-to-day work of making sure the site is up to date and running smoothly as well as working on large ongoing projects like working with an external agency for all-new departmental homepages, our eprospectus and planning for our mobile site provision.

Here’s to the next six months!