Evaluating the use of multimedia for marketing a university degree in information systems

The Faculty of Business of the Central Queensland University offers a Bachelor of Business degree in which there are four streams. Each stream has twelve core units. Students then elect which stream to specialise in. Relative to the number of students in each stream, the Information Stream was low. Hence there was a need to attract more students into the Bachelor of Business (Information Systems) Degree. However, the effort was not to attract more students from the other streams but rather to attract students who otherwise would not be electing to undertake the Bachelor of Business (Information Systems).

It was decided to attempt to achieve this by two main efforts. The first was to review the curriculum to make it more relevant and at the same time to gain professional accreditation. The second approach was to focus more on marketing the degree, principally through the use of a multimedia package.

The review of content was carried out in 1994. The advice from a working party consisting of academics from other Universities, Information Systems professionals in industry, past students and from academic staff of the Central Queensland University were incorporated into the new program. Subsequently, presentations were made by the Department of Information Systems staff to the Australian Computer Society. Upon the basis of documentation submitted to them and the presentations, the Society agreed to provisionally award the degree level one accreditation - the highest level accreditation with the Australian Computer Society. They have since confirmed this accreditation.

The second step was to develop a multimedia package that would be used as part of the marketing effort for the new program. The Department worked in conjunction with the Interactive Multimedia Unit and the Educational Media Section to develop this. It was necessary to try and ensure that the package would appeal to potential students. Accordingly, it was arranged for a group of students from a local high school to use the package and provide feedback. Based on this, minor modifications were made to the package and it was then ready for production.

The package sought not only to provide content to prospective students, but in a manner that was particularly appealing to them. The content of this package included information on the degree and the information systems staff, responses to common questions about the degree and how to apply for entry to the degree program, career options available after graduation, and information on the university in general. Features that are incorporated in the multimedia package include, still pictures, music and morphing of digital video images of the Information Systems staff. As the package is an interactive form of media it allows the user to select topics of interest.

As this was the first marketing effort of its type at the University, it was felt that the multimedia package should be distributed to all high schools in Queensland. In recognition that different schools use different platforms, the multimedia package was produced in a form suitable for an IBM and Macintosh compatible platform. This was done in 1995. The package was addressed to the principal of each of each school. Although the use of the package developed is simple, it was felt prudent to include simple instructions on how to actually commence using the package on the relevant platform.

Apart from the trial prior to production. the multimedia package had largely been developed on what staff thought would appeal to prospective students and also information that students should know about the degree program. In addition, the Faculty is proposing to develop a multimedia package to market the whole of the Faculty. However, before this was done, it was thought that more formal feedback should be obtained about the package that had been developed for the Information Systems Department.

A short questionnaire was developed to obtain feedback from the schools to which the package had earlier been forwarded. It was prepared in a manner to provide feedback about the content of the package, the features incorporated into the package, the use made of the package and methods whereby the package could be made more effective.

The method of administering the questionnaire was by means of a phone survey. Four casual staff (students previously involved in research) were employed for this purpose. The conducting of the phone interviews took approximately 100 hours. This was carried out three months after the package had been distributed.

During the phone call, the interviewer proceeded through the questions in the questionnaire and then recorded the interviewees impressions of the total package and the effectiveness of the CD-ROM in informing students about our degree program.

Several problems were encountered. The package had been addressed to the Principal of the School, so the initial contact attempted was with the principal. Initially, in some instances the principal was not available when the call was first made and it was necessary to return calls to them. Only two cases were found where the package had not been delivered. However, in some instances, the principal had simply not bothered to open it. In other cases, it was opened, but not forwarded to the person at the school responsible for offering course advice to the students. This is despite the letter actually showing the package was for the attention of the guidance officer. In other instances, the guidance officer was not inclined to use the package, but indicated they preferred the more traditional means of paper based brochure information about the degree. At that stage, some schools also did not have computer equipment that provided multimedia facilities and thus they were not able to examine the package. In a few instances, the package had been sent to schools that did not use it, simply because they did not have students up to entrance standard for universities.

Those schools that did use the package reported that they found the content to be relevant and that the students were impressed by the range of technical features used in the presentations. However, at this stage, we have not been able to relate interest in the package to actual enrolment in the course.

Another significant fact that emerged from analysing the results of the questionnaire was the results varied according to the proximity of the school to the Central Queensland region. Those schools close to the University were interested and thus made use of the package and encouraged the use of this as a marketing tool. It is felt that this is because schools close to the proximity of the University tend to be associated with it.

Our experience with the development and the distribution of a multimedia package is that it is necessary to have the right combination of content and presentation methods for the package to be attractive to potential students. Also, the distribution of the package needs to be restricted largely to schools in the proximate area to the University. Any effort to attract students from other areas needs to be carried out by some other marketing means.

The Department is also currently in the process of researching current students to identify those factors that attracted them to the Information Systems stream of the Bachelor of Business and in particular the part (if any) that the multimedia package had in their selection.

As a result of the success of the Departmental CD-ROM it is anticipated that the Faculty will produce a CD-ROM this year to promote all courses offered by the Faculty of Business. The evaluation has helped the Faculty to become more selective in its target market.

Authors: Jo Luck and Graham Ivers, Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Business, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton Qld 4702. Email: j.luck@cqu.edu.au, g.ivers@cqu.edu.au Please cite as: Luck, J. and Ivers, G. (1996). Evaluating the use of multimedia for marketing a university degree in information systems. Different Approaches: Theory and Practice in Higher Education. Proceedings HERDSA Conference 1996. Perth, Western Australia, 8-12 July. http://www.herdsa.org.au/confs/1996/luck.html