Markus Herrera

ENG101 M & W (10:30am-11:45am)

11/19/12

Professor Burgess

 

Alpha Epsilon Delta: Is the Website Useful to Everyone?

            Alpha Epsilon Delta (AED) is an Arizona State University organization made specifically for students seeking a profession in the medical field. AED gives the pre-med students at ASU the opportunity to achieve a better understanding of their profession by providing lectures from medical professionals, internship opportunities, and general information along with community service and social events. AED contains a multitude of activities and opportunities for anyone who wants to join but their website however, leaves a lot to be desired. The AED website is ineffective for bringing in new members because it lacks interesting visual effects, straightforward detailed information, and contact information from club sponsors or members.

            Although AED is an exceptional organization in general, the website that is supposed to promote their organization is seriously lacking amazing visuals. To explore more about what AED is and what their accomplishments are, viewing the organizations website is where someone is supposed to go online. After opening the internet browser, the first and practically only amazing visual sight to see is the AED banner.  The dark grey color, black and red elegant font, and the AED seal that contains medical symbols within the banner can be visually interesting to see for anyone who is exploring the AED website.  Unfortunately, there is not much else to see after the banner other than the maroon color with the ASU logo on the very top of the page. Next to the banner is the same AED seal with medical symbols in black and white that looks like a drawing. The same seal in the website makes this organization look like they lack the creativity necessary to grab the attention of young students. On the left hand side of the webpage, there are only a few links in small type fonts such as “bookmarks”, “communication”, and “pages”. On the right hand side, there are only bookmark links to find the Facebook and National AED website links.

Despite the obvious fact that no one is supposed to come to this website to see a lot of pretty pictures, but the point of having visual effects in an organization’s website is to draw future members in to learn more about the organization and to inspire people to join and become a part of a wonderful club at ASU. After viewing this website, students may not find anything interesting about the organization and that it’s all work and no play. Without any other visual aids to make AED seem more exciting, the kind of attitude that is given to potential members is too serious and boring. 

            Besides visuals, the AED website seems to lack detailed information about what AED does throughout the semesters. Students and potential members who want to find out what AED is can find that information on the welcome section of the website. The information located on the welcome section however, only contains two short paragraphs that seem to be more like summaries that would most commonly be found in a class syllabus. To elaborate, the paragraphs explain that AED “is the National Health Pre-professional Honor Society dedicated to the encouragement and recognition of excellence in pre-professional health scholarship, including medicine, dentistry, nursing, physician's assistant, veterinary, and others.” (AED website: https://orgsync.com/12271/chapter). Furthermore, the welcome sections contains requirements that pledges must perform in order to become a full member such as completing a certain amount of community service hours and attending a certain amount of club meetings and social events before the end of April. After reading the requirements, there is not much else to find out about AED. What students don’t know is that on the left hand side of the website is a very small link that reads “pages” which allows them to see very detailed information on the club broken into different pages. Since the new students at ASU are still trying to understand how things work here, they are left confused once they view this website that doesn’t answer their more developed questions. As a result, the new students are forced to do all the work just to find the answers that they so desperately need.

It seems that the only ones who know how to access the straightforward detailed information about AED are the current members who log in to the website through OrgSync. Even though organizations have the right to preserve their privacy, keeping these important details for themselves only pushes potential members away. The only way for the new students to view even this information is to join the organization and gain a password to view the website in more detail. Once new students have no other choice to view more information than to join AED, they find the information to desire and AED gains new pledge members simultaneously. Although this may be a useful tool to gain new members, AED is merely hoarding more information for current members and forcing students who are just researching the club to join when they may not be so sure. As students examine the websites of other organizations, they drawn in to the visual layout and informed about every detail that the organization has to offer. This is what an organization’s website should do instead of the AED website.

Finally, the home page of the AED website lacks one of the most basic features of an organization’s website, contact information. As a student scrolls to the bottom of the page there are only two email addresses for the president and vice-president of Alpha Epsilon Delta. As if it weren’t bad enough, there weren’t even any phone numbers to contact anyone involved with this organization. The closest way to get in contact with the organization sponsors is to follow the two links located on the right hand side of the webpage. Those links are for the Facebook page for the AED organization at ASU and a link for the National AED website.

Since new students have this instinctive desire to ask questions, they need to be able to meet with and speak to the sponsors of an organization. If a student wishes to set up an appointment with the adult sponsors of AED, they may not even have or want a Facebook page to follow the Facebook link. As for the link to the National AED website, students may follow it to discover that AED is a large organization and that even the National AED sponsors may have difficulty answering their questions for the ASU organization. Without anything as simple as a phone number to the sponsors, new students seeking an interest to join the AED organization are forced to email the president and vice-president, who are only students, and wait hours or possibly days to hear a response back. 

            After examining the faults that Alpha Epsilon Delta has with their website, their tool for inspiring new members of their organization, new students may find themselves questioning whether or not AED is the right club for them. What they don’t realize is that AED is perfect for anyone looking for a medical profession and that they are making a mistake by not becoming a member. Aside from the educational information that AED can provide, activities such as bowling, pool, and flag football are all available for a member to earn social credits and have fun. AED itself is a great organization, but if they wish to recruit new members, then they will have to make some major improvements to their website.

            For instance, instead of using the same AED seal twice, the organization can allow students to view photos of students enjoying themselves while performing their community service. This would allow students to see the kind of joy and excitement that AED members have every week. As for the general layout of the webpage, AED could post on the welcome page something like ‘If you would like to view more information about the objectives and details of AED, please follow the pages link to the left.’ Students would then be able to learn more about AED from a straightforward suggestion instead of doing all the work themselves. In order to correct the contact dilemma, AED should provide phone numbers of sponsors and council members of their organization. Also, for students who don’t have a Facebook page could have access to a link for Twitter or some page where members post what AED is like so that they could see that this organization really is the way that they’re describing themselves. Although these are simply personal opinions and suggestions, AED still has a duty to fulfill to their fellow ASU students, to inspire others with a passion for achieving a career in medicine to follow the right path. Once the organization makes the improvements that they need, the pre-med students and students who are considering working in medicine will see that AED is on the path to becoming one of the best professionals in the medical field.