The University of the Arts London, formerly the London Institute, is home to five of the capital’s creative centres. To mark its recent attainment of University status, University of the Arts London decided to implement a new Web site to bring the Colleges together under the same banner and raise its profile, whilst continuing to give each College the flexibility to maintain their individual sites autonomously.

About

University of the Arts London brings together, in a single federated structure, five of the world’s most famous art and design colleges.
They are:

• Camberwell College of Arts
• Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (incorporating Drama Centre London and Byam Shaw School of Art)
• Chelsea College of Art and Design
• London College of Communication (formerly London College of Printing)
• London College of Fashion (incorporating Cordwainers) The university has produced many of the greatest names in art, design, fashion, theatre, film and communications including Pierce Brosnan, Ralph Fiennes, Esther Freud, Sarah Lucas, and Stella McCartney.

Challenge

The communications team at the University of the Arts London wanted to consolidate the University’s online presence. Previously, the five colleges operated a diverse range of websites – all based on different systems. Some of these sites were deemed too challenging by users and in addition, broken links were a real problem, sometimes leading visitors to inconsistent, out-of-date pages and dead ends.

• Roll out a new, centralized Web environment, allowing colleges to manage their own content
• Provide a centralized course search facility

Solution

University of the Arts London selected Open Text Web Solutions to support its new Web strategy and the launch of the new look site. With Open Text Web Solutions in place, its communications team developed the new site’s look and feel, and began training academic and administrative staff across the University in using the solution's simple SmartEdit user interface to manage its content. Additionally, the team began experimenting with Open Text Web Solutions, using its search capabilities to power the integrated Course Search. Once fully integrated, the personalisation features of the server will be developed to provide varied user experiences of the University’s Web environment.

• Give content management responsibilities to academic and administrative staff
• Maintain centralized control over the site’s look and feel
• Drive personalized content from University’s Oracle database

Results

The Open Text Web Solutions roll-out – both in terms of implementing the software and staff training – was completed well inside the strict timeframes set by the University, which was to have the new site in place in time for the launch of the University in May 2004. Having taken delivery of the software in September 2003, the new University site, including the websites of two of its five Colleges, had been designed and successfully migrated to Open Text Web Solutions. By September 2004, the majority of the University and Colleges had gone live. Almost 100 academic and administrative staff members across the University have been trained on and regularly use Open Text Web Solutions: its ease-of-use has contributed to the success of the rollout. The team now plans to migrate the University intranet to Web Solutions during 2005, extending its use of the server to deliver content on a permissions basis. “It was important that we provide a unified and strong new Web presence for the University to celebrate the recently acquired University status and provide a single access point to the University for the online community,” explains Katie Christie, Web Editor at University of the Arts London.“It was also critical that the individual Colleges could continue to build their individual profiles as highly reputable institutions. Open Text Web Solutions has helped us manage this delicate balance.”

• Low training burden ensures successful rollout
• Implementation completed within tight timeframes
• Future plans include Open Text Web Solutions-driven Intranet

Facts & Figures

Customer: University of the Arts London

URL: www.arts.ac.uk

Project duration: 9 months inclusive of design, implementation, testing and migration to the new site

Site launch: May 2004

Greatest challenge: Incorporating 5 college projects, each with different look and feels into the one university brand using Open Text Web Solutions

Editorial server: IBM HS20 Blade 2.4GHz, 1Gb SDRAM, 40Gb HD

Live server: 2 x IBM 345 Server 2.4GHz 512KB cache, 1Gb RAM. 3 x 36 Gb discs in RAID 5

Hosting: Internal