New Students 2/3/2009

There were a total of 7 students present: 5 were international students from Norway, Switzerland, South Africa, Bhutan, and Taiwan.

How did you hear about MIIS?

1. Googled graduate schools and wanted to find something close to home.
2. Link to MIIS from Peace Corp website.
3. Information from home university.
4. Word of mouth.
5. Fulbright recommended the student after hearing what the student was interested in. Fulbright told student that MIIS was the best for his program.
6. Hear about T&I and then found policy/business to be more intriguing.

What were your initial impressions of the website?

1. Thought the front page was boring but it was easy to navigate. The content of the pages was good but not the design.
2. Reading what the other graduates had done made a very good impression. Liked seeing others stories.
3. Good that there was a section for international students that was easy to find.
4. Didn't feel that it was exciting.
5. It was easy to find the information and figure out the programs and classes.
6. Compared to other schools it was easy to find the programs.
7. One student felt that the website was speaking to him about so many different issues. He could see himself has a student here and that was attractive.
8. The majors aren't as identifiable or mainstream as other schools so the website helped define what the major was and how it fit into a career.
9. MIIS has done a good job of managing student's expectations and the website was a big part of that.
10. International Business or Policy is not very famous/popular in Asia, so the student felt that information on those programs needed to be more informative and clearer on how what someone can do with the degree. This particular student was intially interested in T&I until he started reading about the other majors.

What can we improve about the website?

1. There should be more about student life - especially clubs.
2. Information about teaching style - to understand the American style as well as the Monterey Way.
3. Students used the website quite a bit before arriving but haven't used it since arriving.
4. Links for current studens on the main page.
5. Live chat function would have been helpful to talk with an expert or representative while lookng on line.
6. Connections that make sense for a students interest. A kind of "customers who were interested in this were also interested in this" links on different programs pages.
7. Students come with so many other sites that they are actively using and then they have to begin using First Class, Moodle, Blogs, so it would be good to have a place where there was a "meta program" to merge all of the programs.
8. Like to see everything on the screen; shouldn't have to scroll down so much. Drop down menus help.
9. Use a student portal to organize our time here - academics, student life, careers, ect. 
10. Use maps as a branding tool to show our international flare - where people are from but also where folks have experience.

What are some examples of websites that you like?

1. NHHS.no
2. Google calendar