U.OSU

In 2013, Christine O’Malley, executive director of health sciences, created a WordPress blog to capture the experiences of the One Health Summer Institute in Ethiopia. For eight weeks, 15 faculty members and five students participated in outreach, teaching, and data gathering for research.

The blog served the group well, though something was missing. The chronological nature helped record the trip but lacked additional information surrounding One Health projects and resources for partners of the initiative.

“When I saw U.OSU come out, I thought, that is for us,” O’Malley said. “It solved both my problems, it gave me a platform where information could live as a static website but also included the blog.”

U.OSU provides web space to support the professional and educational endeavors of students, faculty and staff. The sites can act as vessels to share independent work, host assignments, enhance project visibility, facilitate group communications, and represent organizations.

A simple import of One Health’s previous site content maintained past efforts, and kept the blog active for its multiple contributors while now housing static pages with valuable resources.

O’Malley said the best results of the move to U.OSU have been external visibility and internal community building.

“Connecting internally is a real need for us because all the members of the task force come from different parts of the university,” O’Malley said.

The platform allows O’Malley and her team to communicate  efforts through the seven health sciences colleges, the broader university community, and partners around the globe.

“We have people going to Ethiopia in waves. They don’t all go at once, so providing information to them is important,” O’Malley said.

The static pages share resources for partners before they go abroad, be it visas or travel details, and also provide background information on various projects, from rabies research to cervical cancer outreach.

“I don’t have a lot of time—nobody does—but I found that U.OSU was very easy to use,” O’Malley said.

Infographic: Christine O’Malley lead a project in Ethiopia on institutional communications (including the development of a comprehensive iTunes U course). Working with the University of Gondar and Addis Ababa University in branding, content management, media coaching, and social media, she blogged while abroad and picked up some pro tips along the way.