Educating Students About Duke Today Students

Last spring the university created a centralized news site to share information with students. Now it's letting students know it exists.

Duke Today Students, edited by the Office of Undergraduate Education, contains news that students can use, including updates from around campus and "The short List," which highlights the upcoming week's top five most important events and deadlines.

"When the Transportation office issues parking changes, when the Police Department releases safety updates or a really prominent speaker is coming to campus, we have a place to post that information in one place," said Susan Kauffman, director of communication in the Office of Undergraduate Education, who edits the site with a small team of students. "We wanted to ensure the content flow was solid before we started seriously promoting the site to students." 

Members of the Class of 2017 were told about Duke Today Students in the Blue Book that was sent to their homes this summer. During orientation, the First-Year Advisory Counselors will hand out DukeToday Students stickers. And a 4-foot by 16-foot banner promoting the site will go up on the new construction fence on West Campus.

"A small team of students in our office will also come up with additional ways to market the site this semester," Kauffman said.

Duke Today Students is one of four sections in Duke Today; the other three -- News, Opinions and Working@Duke -- were designed for the campus community as a whole and employees more specifically.

Duke Today Students is part of a larger effort to better inform students. Revisions to My Duke, the Student Affairs website and the DukeList site are all designed to improve student access to key transactional activities such as ACES and Sakai, take advantage of social media and better connect students to the wider university community.

"Students tell us there is so much going on and they are on so many listservs that it's hard to know what's most important," Kauffman said. "We create ‘The short List’ on Sunday night so that students who plan their weeks can use it as a guide.

"We know most students get their campus news from many sources, especially word of mouth, but we still believe websites are an important resource that students can count on to find  what they need, when they need it," Kauffman said.