How could this messy problem be solved?

Photos

www.SFU.ca

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uploaded by SAG

                In 2002 the Simon Fraser University invested, according to Premier Gordon Campbell, cited on BCLiberals.com, 70 million dollar in the new SFU Surrey Central Campus, which opened its doors, for the first time, in 2006 (BC Liberals, 2006). Designed by Bing Tom, the 30,000 square-metre campus truly looks astonishing. The modern and sophisticated campus is directly placed on top of the Central City mall, and the nearby SkyTrain station and transit bus loop enable the students to quickly circulate between SFU's Surrey, Burnaby and Vancouver campuses. Located on multiple floors, on the Surrey campus, one can find several closed labs that contain quite new pc's and Macintosh's. Furthermore, the campus contains an open computer lab on the mezzanine level, computers in the library, and a games room that contains
a number of video games, computers and consoles.
                In contrast to this well organized, modern, and straightforward campus, one can find that the SFU website displays the exact opposite. The navigation can be very confusing to new students, and the search function often takes you to places that lie far in the past. Eventually, after a few hours of search one finds what he/she is looking for. In my opinion it was a very interesting experience that searching for a certain telephone number always takes one to different places, and that it takes over 30 minutes to find the page that one already found a few days ago. Besides that the layout of SFU's website can be
very tiring after a while, and doesn't support the modernity of the University.

                Every day, on the Surrey campus, hundreds of students attend their classes in programs of interactive arts and technology, mechatronics systems engineering, computing science, and others. As far as I can tell from the class I am enrolled in, the projects repeat every semester. My suggestion for solving the problem of a far too complicated website is that there could be a collaborative project between classes or even faculties. For example, in graphic design classes the students could work on the website's layout, while other classes could work on the programming part, etc. This would enhance not only the communication between classes or faculties, but also improve SFU's website. Additionally, this would be a brilliant demonstration of the students skills, and it might also attract more people to enrol at the Simon Fraser University.

                To come to a conclusion, I have to say that the SFU truly is a great place to study, but the website does not fully display that. Not only does it look boring, but it is also very complex and complicated. However, it could be easily solved, by a collaborative project between classes or even faculties. The result would be a great demonstration of the skills that one is able to learn and it enhances the communication between different classes.  

SAG 2009

Bibliography

BC Liberals. (2006, September 8). "New SFU Surrey Campus Opens Doors In South Fraser". BCLiberals.com. Retrieved March 9,2009, from: http://www.bcliberals.com/EN/1338/9268