UGA Online offers many great resources for faculty that can now be found more easily on a new online faculty resources website. The experience has been streamlined and well-organized for anyone who visits the new site.

The rapid transition period in the spring and then over the summer provided the insight to help UGA Online focus the site on what was most important to visitors. Every page is actually an answer to commonly encountered questions.

“Distilling topics down to their most important points embodies the good design principles we want users to employ,” said Chris Sparks, Instructional Designer and principal developer of the new site.

The goal was to make things more focused, simpler to navigate, and easier to use.

“If you were to peek behind the curtain, you’d see there’s the experience-based structure of an FAQ in play, but with none of the language that might give it away as such. This allows us to continue to develop it over time without watering down its function or existing content,” Sparks said.

A recently developed UGA website design system was used to ensure the resource site was on-brand, accessibility compliant, and displayed easily and attractively across different screen sizes. Sparks said the design system helped to make that easier in ways that will be invisible to users, but appreciated by faculty or administrators who visit the site for resources.

The faculty resources on the site include information about designing for online, teaching online, and technical resources. If more individual assistance is needed, there’s an option to request a consultation with one of the instructional designers or reach out to the UGA Online marketing team. The site also provides UGA Administrators with information about online program planning, budgeting, and core areas of compliance, such as SACSOC (identity verification), ADA section 508 (accessibility), and state authorization.