Department for Curriculum and Quality Enhancement

Project case study

PrepUP (large) PrepUP website (Department for Curriculum and Quality Enhancement)

The project...

Production of a lively and dynamic pre-entry website to familiarise prospective students with the University of Portsmouth and learning at HE level.

What we did...

  • Developed the website in response to local, national and international research on student expectations / experiences and feedback from the National Students' Survey and the University's own induction surveys.
  • Proactively worked in close collaboration with academic staff to create up-to-date course content which helps prospective students prepare for, and understand more about, learning and living at university. This approach has seen the number of students registering for access to the website rise substantially since its inception in 2007, with PrepUP 2010 seeing over 2500 students signing up.
  • Led on ensuring overall consistency in visual design themes across all online and multi-media resources. This extended to working with colleagues in Marketing and the web team in the development and specification of the website before building it using php, HTML, CSS and jQuery.
  • Engaged in close collaboration with colleagues in Media Production in the production of streamed video interviews with existing students about their experiences of studying at the University of Portsmouth.
  • Copyedited and proofread content, while also addressing issues of accessibility and usability.
  • Actively promoted the use of Web 2.0 technologies including social networking sites such as Facebook as the 'groups' function provides students with the opportunity to interact with peers and build friendship networks before arriving at the University to aid familiarisation and transition to university life and being away from home. This has proved to be a key resource and take up from prospective students in the 10 groups created (two per faculty) has markedly increased from 145 students joining in 2008 to 600 in 2010.
  • Worked closely with the University Library to create a virtual tour of the Library (Exploring the Library) using computer software including Adobe Creative Suite 5, a paper on which was presented by Timothy Collinson (Faculty Librarian, Technology) at the Networked Digital Technologies 2009 Conference in Ostravia, Czech Republic. (Available at http://eprints.port.ac.uk/1509/)

The result...

PrepUP has grown from a small pilot for undergraduate students in August 2007 to become a comprehensive resource for all students as PrepUP 2010 saw undergraduate, postgraduate and international versions merged with over 2500 prospective students registering.

Testimonial...

Feedback from students at all levels has been positive to date:

The 'My Course' section was very helpful when I was preparing for university. The sections on 'Recommended Reading' and 'First Year Topics' were also great and gave me an insight into what to expect.

I think the videos really help students imagine the life ahead of them so they know what to expect from university.

Timetable was quite useful, quizzes were a good way to get me to research things about the Uni, for example I didn't know anything about the Spinnaker Tower, after doing the quiz on it I felt like I built the thing!