Ricky Di
Published: December 6, 2006
A school’s Web site is a valuable tool. Like an ambassador to the public, it gives prospective students a quick glance as to how the institution is run.
For some students, a Web site is the first thing about a school they see.
With the steadily increasing importance the Internet has when searching for a school to attend, the school-in-question’s Web site must stay up to par with the growing competition.
How, then, would someone rate Pensacola Junior College after visiting its ambassador, www.pjc.edu?
Simply put, PJC’s website is well below par. The poor ambassador has had to stand by while other sites played through. And even with pjc.edu’s recent trip to the pro shop for some much needed new equipment, it’s still slashing into the woods while its competition lives life on the green.
On pjc.edu’s homepage are three clearly labeled links: “Students,” “Visitors,” and “PJC sites.” Clicking one of these, one would think, should lead to a page where information on the subcategory is easily accessible and clearly marked. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Once you enter one of these links, you’re thrown into a complex series of poorly marked and jumbled gateways.
As if that weren’t bad enough, important information is not distinguished in any way and rarely shows itself from the crowd.
The search bar, a tool that would aid in this frantic search for “what’s what,” is quite well hidden within pjc.edu. Placed two clicks away from the homepage, under any of the three subcategories in a link labeled “search,” the search bar does very little for an already stumped student.
Also, descriptions of the various departments lack that student-grabbing vigor so desired of an ambassador.
Very little information beyond the standard required course list is given for any degree, and information for the corresponding staff is minimal, and sometimes inaccurate.
Adjuncts, although vast in number, seem to disappear when it comes to the Internet, as finding contact information for them is impossible.
Even some of pjc.edu’s finer points, like the Learning Resources Center’s online section, have a few bugs.
Students are unable to register their ID numbers online to access the LRC’s vast database which makes using this resource impossible for students too swamped to come in person.
As I’ve non-objectively stated, PJC’s ambassador to the world, pjc.edu, is a classic case of “swing-and-a-miss.”
