Our vision is to create a cohesive digital study journey for all our students, where systems are easy to use, information is relevant and we are accessible to our students. We are committed to communicating in a way that enables our students to:
With this vision, AU assumes responsibility for ensuring that each student is presented with academic information and opportunities for interaction in a way that’s easy to understand, easy to access and relevant to the student’s specific academic situation.
We know from surveys and other contexts that AU’s students are often not sure what rules and policies they need to follow and what they need to do when. The major challenges they point to are the need to navigate a variety of different digital platforms, the complexity of the communication landscape and the opaque way information is communicated. As a consequence, students risk overlooking relevant information and spend a disproportionate amount of time looking for information. This leads to feelings of insecurity and a sense that the entire responsibility for communication rests with them.
And the communication landscape is complex: for example, the site studerende.au.dk/en contains over 10,000 pages and is maintained by over 1,400 editors from across AU. So not only do students often have trouble finding the information they need – they can’t be certain that the information they do find is actually accurate and relevant.
It follows that by reducing the complexity of both our digital landscape and the information, we can significantly improve how students experience their communication with AU – which in turn has a decisive impact on how they experience the institutional framework around their studies and their well-being at the university.
With the implementation of the new studies administration system (SIS), and with AU's investment in the platform MyStudies, we are in a new position that opens up opportunities: We can now merge web-based academic information, digital self-service and digital student services – to create a cohesive digital student journey for all of AU’s students.
This vision for the digital student journey applies to the digital universe for studies administration interaction and information as well as digital self-service.
There are two additional digital universes that students need to navigate: A learning universe (LMS, etc.) and a community universe (Teams, etc.).
When working with the digital student journey, we are guided by these principles, which help us prioritise when facing a choice between values.
Value pairs | What does the value mean strategically and practically? |
| Personal and relevant over broad and general | Our focus is on providing personalised, targeted information. |
| Proactive information over search-based information | We structure information based on academic scenarios students encounter that actively guides them to their next step. We take responsibility for ensuring that we present information in a user-friendly, straightforward way, and we don’t use our websites as a storage container for information without considering navigation and relevance. We provide students with access to timely information. |
| Receiver perspective over system perspective | We select and present content based on knowledge about what is relevant to the student’s situation. We don’t let the organisational chart dictate how students navigate our webpages. We present content in a way that’s simple and easy to understand for all target audiences. |
| Accessible and friendly over formal | We use active, clear and accessible language. Our writing has a helpful, friendly tone: “I see you, and I want to help you.” We prioritise understanding and confident navigation over formal distance/authority. You can always get in touch with a helpful person. |
We will establish a clear information architecture in a coherent digital landscape. We will achieve simplicity by working to ensure seamless transitions between systems. There will be a single entry point to academic information, self-service and interaction: MyStudies.
We will simplify the digital studies administration landscape, so it’s easy for students to find relevant, easy-to-understand information about their studies. The websites studerende.au.dk and students.au.dk will become part of mitstudie.au.dk and mystudies.au.dk respectively, so students engage with a single unified platform.
We will rethink and redesign web-based academic information. In line with the value ‘personal and relevant’ information, we will prioritise personalised, targeted information, which means that students must be able to access more academic information through the sign-in solution at mystudies.au.dk. Students should still be able to access broadly applicable, general academic information without signing in via mystudies.au.dk as an open platform. However, such information should apply to all students, so that individuals still perceive it as personally relevant.
We will focus on developing and improving the students’ digital interface with studies administration.
We will cover all the academic scenarios students can encounter in their university careers and offer them proactive support in the form of self-service options, reminders, guidance and overviews – tailored to the individual students’ current situation.
We will prioritise providing an intuitive user experience for students using the self-service functions in
MyStudies. Students should not have to engage with what underlying system they are using to perform a particular task.
In addition to MyStudies, students have to navigate their learning universe and their online social communities. MyStudies will serve as the shared entry point to all of these universes, and our goal is to make the user experience of navigating between them intuitive. The platforms must be user-friendly and function across devices (smartphone/laptop/tablet).
Academic scenarios will be the new structural principal guiding how we present academic information and self-service functions: content will be presented to students that is tailored to a concrete scenario. Examples of these kinds of scenarios include ‘commencement of studies’, ‘completion of the Bachelor’s degree’, ‘exchange’ and ‘failed exam’.
We will identify the typical academic scenarios and create well-defined digital user journeys that actively guide students from one scenario to the next. This will allow us to make digital interactions with students more personal and guide them through the scenario they’re dealing with.
We will personalise the user interface for our students by using data and knowledge about the user journey to create the best possible intuitive user journey for each academic scenario. We will use data combined with expertise in student guidance to select content, so we ensure that students are always presented with relevant academic information to help guide their actions in each academic scenario.
We will pay particular attention to academic scenarios involving a transition from one scenario to another. We will develop a deeper understanding of what students experience during transitions, for example from a Bachelor’s degree programme to a Master’s degree programme, preparation for writing a Master’s thesis, the transitions between semesters, leave and other scenarios in which students are normally ‘on their own’.
On this background, we will develop an effective communication flow for each scenario. This is how we support the values of ‘proactive’ and ‘accessible and friendly’ in the transitions that can be a vulnerable time for students, and which they may need extra help to get through successfully.
As a supportive strategic effort, we must create a well-defined organisational framework for the digital student journey, including a clear division of roles and responsibility for the development and maintenance of content. When developing and maintaining content, we will be guided by shared models that ensure that different perspectives and skillsets are brought into play fruitfully: the student perspective, studies administration expertise and communication expertise.
To create the best digital student journey, it will also be necessary to develop and allocate the organisation’s resources and skills.
AU’s studies administration’s goal is to speak with one voice that our students perceive as proactive, receiver-oriented, and personal, as well as relevant, accessible and friendly.
Our communication will be guided by shared principles for content, design, tone and structure, which will also entail focus on aligning recruitment communication and academic information.
The digital student journey must work well for all our target audiences, for example new students, further education students, international students, students with dyslexia and more. We must have a shared understanding of the needs of our target audiences and how best to meet them.