Campus News

UK to Soon Offer an Online Academic Exploration Tool

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LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 18, 2015)  Since 2012, the University of Kentucky Office of Enrollment Management has envisioned an innovative tool to streamline and centralize information about academic degree offerings.  This tool would improve and transform the way prospective and current students blueprint their academic experience.  This fall, this vision will become reality as the university will offer the new Academic Exploration Tool. 

"With the university’s breadth and depth of academic degree programs, we needed a robust Web tool to match the expansive academic opportunities available here at UK," said Tyler Gayheart, communications and technology director for Enrollment Management. "Our team conducted in-depth research and analysis across other benchmark institutions, prospective and current students, faculty and staff - ultimately uncovering how we can make a better user experience for someone exploring degree programs at UK." 

In an effort to create a better search and exploration process for prospective and current students, existing academic major sheet PDFs will be discontinued and transformed into an adaptive and responsive website.  This outdated website that hosts the major PDFs will be replaced by the university's very own Academic Exploration Tool (AET). 

Congested major PDFs, which are found at www.uky.edu/majors, will be revamped into a structured and user-friendly webpage that will be easily accessible. The website functionality will allow students to discover degree programs at a personal level.

"This will be a new way for prospective and current students to search, explore and find an academic degree program that best fits their interests, skills and academic and career goals," Gayheart said.

Enrollment Management has partnered with the myUK: GPS (Graduation Planning System) team to utilize a Web service to dynamically feed curriculum and course information into the Academic Exploration Tool. The myUK: GPS reshapes the student planning, advising and course registration experience, delivering real-time, critical information via self-service features to promote proactive planning for students.

The first phase of the Academic Exploration Tool project will capture all undergraduate degree programs with subsequent phases capturing graduate, Ph.D. and professional programs.

Web analytics, user feedback and a 3-year survey have influenced the redesign and approach for this new Web property. The tool will be in full use by Fall 2016.

Research shows that content regarding academic majors and minors is the most searched feature on the university's main website. However, there can be slight differences between information that lives on the colleges' websites versus the university's website. The AET will effectively create a uniform voice flowing from the information projected by individual colleges to the information housed on www.myuk.edu.  This will cause less confusion when prospective and current students search for information about majors on different websites within the university. 

"Behind the scenes, we’re using some pretty cool technology," Gayheart said. "However, the best feature is the collaborative effort by all colleges and departments to make a better user experience when exploring academic degree programs at UK."

After the launch, plans include adding more features to the AET by incorporating information from Glassdoor and the U.S. Department of Labor.

The AET revamps the way students prepare for college classes and their futures, making the process more user friendly and allowing for more creativity when searching and considering forthcoming career possibilities.

"I’m incredibly proud of the cross-departmental collaboration on behalf of the colleges, departments, Mobile Portal Workflow and Enrollment Management," said Associate Provost for Enrollment Management Don Witt. "This will be an incredible tool for our prospective and current students when searching and exploring the academic degree program offerings at the University of Kentucky." 

MEDIA CONTACT: Rebecca Stratton, (859) 323-2395; rebecca.stratton@uky.edu