When the fall semester rolls around and the campus comes alive, there are always noticeable changes in Tufts' appearance. Upon a quick examination of the Medford campus, one can see the remnants of construction crews and the finished products of a variety of renovation efforts. This summer, however, it wasn't just buildings that were remodeled. The Tufts University website, www.tufts.edu, received a long-awaited facelift, leaving it a more technologically up-to-date information center.
To create the new website, a University-wide team of Tufts faculty collaborated to ensure that Tufts' new site would reflect the needs of the entire community. Input was sought from various campus sources about the design and content, and hundreds of hours of work were put into the modern design. Major changes include adding a search feature and the main menu to every page, and including new scroll down menus.
The new site also boasts a faster loading time than its predecessor. The Web team was able to reduce the load time for the main home page by approximately 80 seconds. With a connection speed of 28.8 kbps, Tufts now has one of the fastest sites among top universities in the US.
The redesigned website has received both positive and negative responses from students who use it to access everything from the Tufts online directory to information about student services.
Response to the actual design of the new website was positive overall, but students seem to be somewhat disappointed with how the information is organized.
"The design looks pretty nice, but the organization is a little weak," sophomore Aaron Donovan said.
Some students find the menus on the front page, which were moved but not altered, to be bothersome, because it can be harder to access what they are looking for on the site. When a visitor lands on the main page, he or she can choose to go to one of the main sections: About Tufts, Admissions, Areas of Study, Research, and Alumni. There are other options on the page as well, including the online directory, a link to news around Tufts, university libraries, and different job opportunities.
Several students said the new site is more visually pleasing. "I think it's really nice. I like the use of colors," junior Judith Scott said.
Donovan was also pleased with the new look. "The site looks nicer, and it represents the school better," he said. "It's also more up-to-date."
Students noticed that each time they visited the site the main graphic changed. The rotating photo gallery features images from the Medford, Boston, Grafton, and Talloires campuses, each depicting student-professor interaction.
Students interviewed also remarked that many of the subsites on Tufts' main website had not changed, and that this made it easier to locate useful online resources. However, the appearance of other Tufts websites may change in the future, because the University has approved plans to create a full-time Web team and advisory board to keep Tufts' online presence up-to-date.
Feedback about the new Web site is welcome and should be sent to webcomments@tufts.edu.
