Description
As a service learning project for the my JRN369 Advertising & PR Research class, we were given CMU’s Study Abroad Program as a client. We were to conduct a full research campaign that included primary and secondary research that would aim at solving our client’s decline in student involvement in the last few years. We did brand positioning research to compare Central’s study abroad program to other universities as well as conducted interviews, a survey, and a focus group to gather student input. In the end, my group wrote overviews and in-depth reports that I compiled into a research report that was given to our client. The goal of the report was to be concise and easy to read for the client while accurately showing the data we gathered.
Contributors
Brittany Stevens: Designer, Photo Editor, Researcher, Copywriter
Isabella Blenkle: Researcher, Copywriter
Thomas Cotter: Researcher, Copywriter
Natalie Hartford: Researcher, Copywriter
Isabella Blenkle: Researcher, Copywriter
Thomas Cotter: Researcher, Copywriter
Natalie Hartford: Researcher, Copywriter
Sample of Copywriting
I was responsible for a small portion of the copywriting for this project, and the most notable was the website comparison research report. In this research, I compared CMU's study abroad website to Grand Valley State's and the University of Minnesota's study abroad websites. Having had web design experience, I knew what made a good website in terms of design, practicality, and legally with ADA guidelines. Below is a sample of the report I wrote, and HERE is a full copy of the writing.
Central Michigan University’s study abroad website is easy to navigate to an extent. There is clear navigation to the child pages of the website through the list of links that are on the left side of the page and just under the ‘hero’ section, but grandchild pages are only accessible from the related child page. The grandchild pages do not show in the homepage at all, which could mean that students or parents may not know that the site has certain information. It also means that finding and relocating information is more difficult for users. This could discourage them from using the site. This issue is worsened when viewing in half-desktop view or on the mobile version. The list of links is not in full sight of the users, and the new links/pages are only seen if the user clicks on the “In This Section” accordion that then shows the new pages/links.
Additional Photos of the Project
