Prospective students vote UCF's website to top 10 in UK

The websites of 152 Higher education institutions were recently judged by sixth-formers preparing to apply to university.  University College Falmouth's site was ranked the 6^th best-performing institute in the UK.

The students were asked by Times Higher Education (THE) to mark the sites from 1 to 5 for five areas: accessibility; the ease of making contact; use of online peer review; evidence of their unique role and character and the amount of useful insight into life on campus.  The UCF website received 22 points out of a possible 25.

The main message of the THE report was that "applicants want to hear less from universities themselves, and much more from their students", an area that Falmouth's website was awarded the maximum amount of marks available.

"We're really pleased to hear that our website rates highly amongst students who might be applying to study with us. Following our own research with students at schools and colleges last year, we made a lot of changes to the site to make it easier to use and ensure the information potential students wanted to access was quick to find" said Sam Kirby, Head of Marketing, "Both our traditional and mobile websites are constantly evolving and we're working hard to add more interactivity, both on www.falmouth.ac.uk and through our wider presence on social networking sites.  We're always happy to hear suggestions as to what we can do to make our sites even more useful and accessible so do get in touch if you have ideas."

John Cowles, Director of Penzance based altcom Limited that designed, built and maintains the website, commented: "The team at altcom are all sporting cheesy grins at the 6th former's vote of confidence.  The website is aimed at them and the fact they rate it highly really means a lot to us. We're working closely with Falmouth to get a lot of new ideas in place as part of their process of continual website improvement. We look forward to bumping the UCF website to number 1 next year!"

The THE survey aimed to find the "best examples of engagement with site visitors and the most effective use of emerging technologies" and used sixth-form students from Didcot Sixth Form, Gillingham School and Chigwell School as a representative mix of the expected visitors to UK university websites.

Table of top 6 results.

The full cover story report by Hannah Fearn appeared in THE, 19 to 25 August, Issue no. 1,961 and can also be read by following this link:

www.timeshighereducation.co.uk

altcom has been delivering award winning web design & development and bespoke software since 1995. www.altcom.co.uk

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the right to award degrees in its own name.  UCF has two campuses - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns and jointly manages with the University of Exeter).

UCF's merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008 created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Dance, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing.  The Dartington-based courses are relocating to Cornwall this summer to a high-specification £15.4M Performance Centre at the Tremough Campus that will launch in September 2010, paving the way for the creation of a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2013/2014 that will be unique to the South West.

UCF is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

Ends

For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby Dip CIPR MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email:  jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk

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