6 Reasons you Need to Post your Course Catalog Online

In my last blog post, I talked about course catalog management systems and how to choose one. But before you even think about that, it's important to understand why you need to post your course catalog online in the first place.

Your course catalog affects your entire university - from students to faculty to parents, all of these stakeholders are impacted by the course catalog. An online catalog must be searchable, easy to navigate, contain the most current information (a student is a lot more likely to look something up online than search through a book), and be branded to match the university's online image. But before you can even think about that, the catalog has to be posted online. Here are a few reasons to post your course catalog online:

• Accessibility. Give your audience the ability to access the course catalog from anywhere. This is really the biggest reason to have an online catalog - it makes it easier for all university stakeholders.
• Recruitment. Show students what courses they can take and what they're required to take. After all, that’s what they’re there for. Through our research, we've found that parents view academic programs or majors as the most valuable information in university online content, and what better to meet that need than an online catalog?
• Student Enrollment. Make it easy for students to find their degree requirements, general education requirements, and view their course options through intelligent Search features.
• Show off what you Offer. By posting your course catalog online, you're disseminating all programs and courses to all that come to your website - making your university look even better.
• Easy Navigation. It's a lot easier to find what you're looking for in a website versus a book - giving students a place to search for a course or program instead of forcing them to flip through a book [that they probably lost weeks ago...] not only increases the accessibility of the catalog information, it's just easier.
• Save costs. No surprise here. Printed catalogs take up a ton of space and are incredibly expensive to print – and what if there’s an error after the books come back from the printer? Get rid of printed catalogs altogether, or print only the number of catalogs as are necessary, since you won't have to distribute them to the entire university when all the information is online.
  

These are just a few of the reasons your catalog should be posted on your university website. To find out more about how CatalogM can help you be successful in managing your online catalog, go to http://catalogm.allofe.com, or send me an email at kbrosious AT allofe DOT com