Summary: McGill's new Course Catalogue was created with input from (literally) hundreds of McGill students and staff members. Read this article to learn how audience research informed the design and building of this key resource, and find out how to participate in our post-launch evaluation interviews.
What you told us about course registration at McGill
McGill’s new Course Catalogue officially launched at the beginning of May. Among the many McGill websites, this one stands out as a key resource—arguably the key resource.
It serves as the primary destination for students, faculty, and the public to access detailed information about our academic programs and courses. Its influence extends to enrolment, the student experience, and even McGill’s broader reputation.
We put a lot of effort into making sure you had a say in how this site was designed an built. We reached out to get your input in every phase of the project. We're very grateful to everyone (and there were a lot of you!) who responded to our requests for feedback.
Your input in the project planning phase
What you told us
Early in the planning phase of our project, we surveyed and interviewed key audience segments involved in course registration processes. This included our primary audience, students, as well as advisors and site managers and editors. Here are the top things you asked for:
- Keep all existing content, but make sure it's always accurate. (Make it easy for staff to maintain!)
- Add more course-specific detail.
- Refine the layout to be scannable, consistent, and make key info easy to find.
- Offer better support for finding courses offered in the current term, schedule building, and registration.
- Allow users to filter courses based on personal interests (in addition to availability and eligibility).
Your input in the design phase
interviews
What you told us
We checked in with you again as we finalized our design and prepared to build the new Course Catalogue. Here are some of the things you said that influenced the project:
- Change the website name from eCalendar to Course Catalogue!!!
- Promote the Visual Schedule Builder more prominently on the site.
- Introduce visual elements to break up the text and make layouts more engaging.
- The separation of undergraduate, graduate, and continuing studies sections is appreciated and makes navigation easier.
- There is a need for clear indicators of which programs are majors, minors, honors, or concentrations.
- Provide concise summaries of program requirements and options at the top of each program page.
Next steps
The launch of the Course Catalogue isn't the end of this project. Due to time constraints and platform limitations, we weren’t able to accomplish everything we set out to do in this first version. There’s still more work ahead. The good news? Our conversations with you about improving the site will continue!
Post launch evaluation
Post-launch evaluation of the Course Calendar is underway. We're looking to interview students and staff connected to course registration processes. A few interviews have already taken place, but we still have open slots we'd like to fill. If you're available to share your feedback please let us know: Sign up for a Course Catalogue feedback interview.
Next steps for site managers and editors
If your department website dynamically displays course or program information using WMS shortcodes, you might be wondering how your site will be impacted by this change. Read our article, Goodbye eCalendar, hello Course Catalogue, for details.
The us in this article: Course Catalogue project team
In addition to seeking feedback from community members across McGill, this project was the a cross-departmental effort that included Enrolment Services, IT Services and Communications and Institutional Relations (with multiple Web Services team members from IT and CIR) A big thank you to the IT Governance, Compliance & Project Management team for including us in the experience!
