SMU’s Integrated Information Technology Services (IITS) has emerged as the winner of the Leader of the Pack: Higher Education category of Acquia Engage Awards 2020 which was announced at the

Acquia Engage annual conference on 20-21 October2020. Acquia is the open digital experience platform that enables organisations to build, host, analyze, and communicate with their customers at scale through websites and digital applications.

The annual Awards, into its fifth year, was organised to showcase how the customers and partners of Acquia are building a better tomorrow, making quick pivots when reacting to events in 2020 and setting a new precedent for what digital transformation can be. This year’s field of finalists features 47 projects across 15 categories. A panel of distinguished judges comprised of digital experience platform and digital marketing experts evaluated the submissions based on functionality, integration, performance and overall user experience.

IITS took home the gong for a collection of websites that were created as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Mr Goh Wee Sen, IITS Senior Associate Director (Web & Media Technologies) said, “During this pandemic, physical events that the University usually organises had to quickly switch to a virtual mode. Websites became an even more important means of communication and outreach. Our team had to adapt and adjust quickly, rethink how to help the University pivot effectively, and build successful online experiences. This award is not only an acknowledgement of the efforts by the IITS Nextweb team, it is also a testament to the strong collaboration and partnership within the larger Team SMU.”

SMU has taken a series of measures to safeguard the health and wellbeing of the SMU community since the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus early this year, and IITS has been at the forefront in implementing some of these measures. A microsite was set up to serve as a one-stop location for the University to communicate key updates and important information on COVID-19 with the SMU community and beyond. Lessons were moved online and staff worked from home, physical events were either cancelled or moved to a virtual mode. Major events, such as the SMU Open House, Freshmen Orientation, Vivace and graduation of the Class of 2020 were moved online so that the University can continue to engage with the community — prospective students, incoming freshmen, alumni and members of the public — even when physical events were not possible.

Implementing these measures required IITS to quickly make offline materials accessible online, while ensuring that technology enhanced the richness of the interactions. To facilitate the transition to remote work, IITS also had to enable distributed content authoring and flexibly integrate the websites with other content platforms like media streaming, live webinars and live chats. While doing these, IITS had to keep content reusability and web architecture capabilities in mind, so that these newly created resources can remain useful long after the pandemic has passed. The fact that much of the collaboration and review of websites were conducted through the new ‘normal’ of discussing over MS Teams and Zoom meetings made it even more challenging.

IITS decided to adopt the Acquia Cloud Platform to facilitate the pivot to online mode. It collaborated with various SMU units to determine the feasibility and scope of moving events online. Understanding that live broadcast (for webinars and panel discussions) and live chat were part of most events’ requirements, the IT team helped with integrating third-party solutions with Acquia Cloud Platform.

The pivot to an online mode has been successful. One notable achievement was the exemplary cross-unit collaboration which enabled the University to host SMU Virtual Open House 2020 in March with a rich variety of content that was put together in under three weeks. The result was a record attendance of 20,000 visitors – a 100% increase on the attendance in 2019. The Open House encompassed 52 live webinars, over 600 live chats and 35 information videos. The websites comfortably handled 53,000 visitors (about twice the usual number) and 245,000 pageviews during a seven-day period, double the number of visitors from the previous year’s physical Open House.

Another example is FOMO (or Freshmen Orientation Moves Online) which was held over two four-day runs in late July. It witnessed more than 1900 newly-matriculated undergraduates take part in their very first official SMU event. This was an impressive 80% attendance of a cohort of more than 2400.

Congratulations to IITS for winning this award!