The Fiji National University’s (FNU), new website was launched this afternoon by Acting Vice-Chancellor, Tessa Price.

Price said the fresh and engaging website was designed to ensure users were able to access relevant information they needed about the institution.

“For organisations such as educational institutions, people come to our website to learn about our programmes, campus locations, payment plans, research and academic services, as well as support services,” Price said.

“This is why it is important to have accurate and updated information available online so that people can make informed choices when making important life decisions, such as what, and where, to study.”

“As many of you know, during COVID-19, 100% of FNU’s learning was also moved online.  Think about how accessible this makes learning to all Fijians, all you need is a device.”

“Fiji National University offers multiple pathways into its vocational, research and higher education programmes, hence it was important to provide prospective students with relevant and specific information on their field of study.”

Price highlighted that extensive consultations were held with various users of the website to gauge their their views on what the website should contain.

“To ensure that the website met the needs of both our internal and external users, the University’s website revamp committee conducted focus groups with prospective students, teachers, parents, our current students, staff and corporate stakeholders to ensure we that we captured their views on what the website should contain.

“These users were consulted extensively throughout the website revamp process, which also followed international best practices of other universities to ensure all our users could navigate the site with ease.

“Our focus groups also had a chance to review the new website once completed and the University is proud of this revamped website, knowing that information on our learning, teaching and support services have been captured effectively and is readily available online for our students.”

Price said the new website was utilised during the University’s first-ever Virtual Open Day last week and recorded 8,500 visits to its dedicated tab.

“The FNU website went live just in time for our first-ever Virtual Open Day last week, which I believe was a great success, judging by the 95 schools that registered and over 1,000 people who participated in the live chat sessions during the week,” the Acting Vice-Chancellor said.

“We had a dedicated Virtual Open Day tab whereby participants visited our website to watch pre-recorded videos from the respective Colleges, financial, academic and student support services. These participants later joined our live Q and A sessions to have their questions answered by academic representatives.”

Price said she was honoured to officially launch the website, which was aligned to the University’s mission to support the economic and social development of Fiji through relevant, high-quality education and training.

Director Marketing and Communications, Jenies Mudiliar also gave a brief overview of the website’s new features.

“Our website is a responsive web design which means it translates well to any device of any size,” Mudiliar said.

“We’ve also made it disability friendly for those who are visually impaired. They can increase the font size on the website to whichever size suits them.”

She highlighted that in addition to the programmes listing, one of main features on the home page was the course finder.

“When we went to our prospective students, the high school students, there was a few features which they requested for which wasn’t very popular in other universities”

“The students were not aware of the names of programmes and wanted to search for programmes by job titles. So we created a search bar that students could use which would show courses related to that job title search.”

“We used best practices from other universities but customised it to our market, so this is something we’ve done for our students which sets us apart from other universities.”

Mudiliar added that other features such as virtual campus tours, Colleges and research information, alumni and the latest news about the University could be accessed online by users.