UTSA Today user survey brings helpful feedback

(Dec. 3, 2003)--UTSA faculty and staff members were sent a link Oct. 29 to a UTSA Today user survey, and 668 responded.

We enthusiastically appreciate your participation, and as we promised to report -- here are the results:

77 percent of the respondents were staff and 17 percent were faculty; 7 percent were students, even though the survey link was not e-mailed to them. (Students will be asked to take the online survey in the near future.)
Each age group was virtually evenly represented.
54 percent read UTSA Today daily or several days each week; 35 percent read it weekly; 94 percent read it at work.
61 percent said UTSA Today is good overall; 17 percent said excellent; 21 percent said fair; 1 percent said poor.
58 percent rate story quality as good; 15 percent said excellent; 26 percent said average.
68 percent said they like the number of stories online; 30 percent said there weren’t enough.
86 percent said stories are the appropriate length; 76 percent said they are online the appropriate number of days.
Respondents said UTSA Today is relevant to faculty, staff and students, with a slightly higher relevance rating for staff.

Today's headlines

Article tools

Overwhelmingly, respondents wanted to see more stories on faculty research and publications, staff achievements, short- and long-term institutional plans and articles that help build school spirit.

Some would like to see fewer "grip-and-grin" photos of administrators on the site. Most liked the Today photos, but equal numbers said they were too dark or too light. (Which seems to indicate that some people might need to adjust their monitors or consider ordering a new one!) A few said photos were blurry or "right out of the can." (We'll try to do better.)

As you can see, the UTSA Today design has been revised. There will be other changes as we gauge additional reader comments. Comments were very helpful in assessing the current state of UTSA Today and where we want to take the publication. We paid attention to all remarks, whether expressed in a positive or negative manner, and there were a lot of good points.

The changes are:

More stories will be online at a time, which means many stories will remain online longer.
There is a cleaner look to the page design; some features were moved and a couple were deleted.
The new "Spotlight" feature will highlight student, faculty and staff activities.
The new "FYI Features" will add human-interest stories and columns to the site.
An easy link to the UTSA Calendar was added.
"Did You Know?" and "Looking Back" were deleted, but may return at some point.
By-lines were added to articles and photo credits will be included when possible.
Tools were added below "Today's headlines" in each article to provide an easy way to e-mail articles and to instantly put them in a printer-friendly format.

A few respondents felt that politics is involved in getting stories on UTSA Today. Our response is that we attempt to accommodate everyone -- and we like all UTSA offices and departments. We are biased only toward those who send us information two to three weeks in advance of an event rather than the day before. With short notice there often isn't much we can do to help.

Some respondents indicated they didn't understand the difference between UTSA Today and @UTSA, the e-mail newsletter sent to all faculty and staff. Both come from the University Communications public affairs office, but have separate audiences that sometimes overlap. @UTSA blurbs occasionally link to full articles on UTSA Today.

We won't promise that you won't see more photos of administrators shaking hands, but we will strive to do more articles that talk about the new programs, research and people the administrators are shaking hands about.

The survey inspired us to put to paper our mission:

The mission of UTSA Today is to provide an accurate and diverse view of UTSA events and news, and accurate communications during emergencies to an internal audience of UTSA staff, faculty and students at multiple sites, while maintaining professional standards in presentation and content.
Additionally, UTSA Today stories keep in mind external readers including prospective students and their parents, alumni, the San Antonio community, legislators, public officials and others.

Our favorite survey comments pertained to pictures of students that we put online. One person thought students in baseball hats cheapen the UTSA image. Another was concerned that the photos underrepresent attractive students on campus. We're not sure what to do with those remarks, except chuckle... quite a lot.

So, thanks again for participating in the survey. Please continue to e-mail your comments, or just look for me on campus. I'll be the guy in the baseball cap.

Tim Brownlee
Editor, UTSA Today

University Communications
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