February 22, 2005

BIRMINGHAM, AL — University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Web Communications has won the District III Award of Excellence for Overall Website Design and Implementation for the interactive site UAB in Antarctica [www.Antartica.uab.edu]. The site allowed the public to follow UAB researchers on their 2004 expedition to the frozen continent through journal logs, vivid images and a unique question-and-answer forum. WebTrends tracking service reported 24,071 visits that averaged nearly 13 minutes each from the February site launch until the forums closed in June.

The CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) award was presented during the CASE District III Conference Feb. 20-23 in Atlanta. District III includes all universities in the Southeast. CASE membership includes more than 3,000 colleges, universities, and independent elementary and secondary schools in the United States, Canada, Mexico and 42 other countries.

UAB Web Communications provides a variety of free services to the UAB community, including Web templates that allow individual departments and/or programs to update site content while keeping the overall design intact, site traffic information and content management classes and support. Fees for customized sites such as UAB in Antarctica are competitive and insure all sites are consistent with the UAB brand and work with other department and university marketing strategies.

“We begin by working closely with our university clients to identify site audiences, goals, and key messages,” said Tammy Glazkov, Web communications manager. “All elements of the final product work together, from the name to the graphic presentation. Special attention is given to making the site easy to use for all audiences. Content is broken into clearly defined areas and the language is simple and easy to understand.

“We were trying to leverage the popularity of the blog — or Web log — culture, and meet specific requirements for a site with moderation and journal entries from multiple authors. We needed a Web site with a clean, simple design that was easy to navigate. The site visitors had to feel as if they were a part of the expedition, seeing what the researchers were seeing and reading about what it was really like in Antarctica. The site simply would not have worked without the commitment and dedication of the researchers who shared their experiences and interacted with people who posted comments and questions.”

UAB Professor of Biology Charles Amsler, Ph.D., and James McClintock, Ph.D., UAB Endowed University Professor of Polar and Marine Biology, commissioned the UAB in Antarctica Web site as part of their latest National Science Foundation-funded expedition.

“Dr. Amsler and I are keenly aware that this unique and remote continent provides unparalleled opportunities for educational outreach,” McClintock said. “We felt that our research program in marine chemical ecology should be designed to not only yield research articles, but also to provide innovative educational tools that broaden the impact of our scientific enterprise.

“The UAB in Antarctica Web site has provided an instrument to reach out to, and most importantly to interact with, a broad constituency, including K-12 and college students, teachers, civic and academic groups, and the populace at large,” McClintock said. “You can imagine our delight in learning that not only did the Web site infect a very broad swath of humanity with the excitement of scientific discovery, but in several instances entire schools followed our research adventures from day to day.”

The site attracted an international following with 17.38 percent of visitors coming from counties such as Australia, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Although the expedition ended in June 2004, the site continued to gain visitors interested in the archived content: 7,826 visits were logged June-September 2004, 31.4 percent of which were international.

The site was built in a content management program with moderated forums that could be managed by the researchers in Antarctica. Navigation and usability were ensured by including updated programming such as spam protection, a search function and RSS feeds; compliance with Section 508 accessibility requirements; printer-friendly pages; breadcrumb trails; and a clearly defined area to post comments and responses to journal entries.

Glazkov said selecting a site name that is most likely to be found by search engines also is important in the design of a Web site. In the case of UAB in Antarctica, the name resulted in the UAB team taking part in an Olympic event. During a search on the Internet, John Feight with the Foundation for Hospital Art discovered the site and contacted the researchers. As a result they were asked to create one of seven panels of “Hope Rising,” a painting that represented the seven continents and was presented to the mayor of Athens during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games.

Web Communications and the UAB researchers also worked closely with the UAB Office of Media Relations to promote the expedition and the site. Based on circulation and viewership numbers, media placements reached a potential audience of 2.6 million worldwide.

The CASE award is not the first time the Web Communications group has garnered peer recognition for its outstanding work. The UAB Osteoporosis Prevention and Treatment Clinic Tone Your Bones Web site [www.uab.edu/shp/toneyourbones/] was recognized with the World Wide Web Health Award and the World Wide Web Mature Media Award.

Web Communications is in the process of redesigning the UAB front door [www.uab.edu]. The first phase of the new site is expected to debut in June.

“The Web is often the most visible tool any organization has and it must reflect the brand of the organization, or more simply put what differentiates you from the competition,” Glazkov said. “We have worked with a universitywide committee and nationally know consultant to insure that the new UAB site will reflect the university mission and provide easy and logical access to the public.”

For more information about the services offered by UAB Web Communications call (205) 975-7585 or log onto [www.uab.edu/webcommunications].