I’m Mats Olsson, the webmaster of Etenjournal.com – a bit pretentious perhaps – you can call me  ”the Webguy”. I started to work in the Eten organisation 2019 and my assignment was to transfer all the stuff from the old website to the new WordPress platform. It took some time to figure out the different aspects of ETEN, but now I’m ready to share some thoughts with you. Hopefully we could discuss the future of the platform.

Who’s in charge of what?

I think we could agree on the importance of information being correct and relevant.

• The TIG pages are handled by the TIG leaders (sometimes with support from the webmaster).
• The Exchange pages are handled by the ECOs
• The List of current members list is handled by the secretary Annette Bruun.
• The rest is my responsibility – it’s hard to be the webmaster. I’m wide open for new material, but there should always be some kind of ETEN connection

Three functions 

1. The platform is a place for promoting and documenting the conferences. I’ve learned (the hard way) to gather all preconference information in one post and to work close with the arranging university. During the conference I try to cover what’s going on in the different TIGs, but realize it’s a stupid ambition. I’m still longing  for more material from the TIGs. (Maybe next year?) Every TIG is responsible for how they present themselves to the world, though some marketing could be necessary in the future. Small might be beautyful, but big is less vulnerable.
2. The scientific and academic section is called JETEN and is edited by Michel Hogenes. He does an excellent work coordinating the peer review processes. JETEN is accepted by DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) and hopefully there will be lots of interesting articles in the future. Right now there are more than 120 articles published in JETEN and previous editors made big efforts to raise and maintain the academic standard of the journal. Bottom line  – ETEN has a double face – We can combine academic research with networking through exchange of experiences.
3. The Exchange activities are very important. I believe sending students and teachers abroad is the very core of ETEN. During the pandemic it has been hard to maintain the international exchanges and travelling has becomed complicated from many aspects. The ECOs are responsible for the updating of the information. We’re struggling to find a form that is user friendly and easy to administrate. Some might say exchanges all comes down to relations, and websites are unrelevant. Perhaps we live in a time of information overload, perhaps students are able to arrange their international studies on their own?  We have discussed communication problems between ECOs and international offices at some universities – where are the successful examples? COIL is an upcoming idea and I’m happy to publish inspiring activities. 

How many visitors?

I’m happy to see this graph over the development for the years since 2020. We’re growing, but why?

The platform seems to be highly relevant and appreciated during the conferences. How can we spread the activity? I’m using the ETEN facebook group to promote the platform. Sometimes it’s good to conduct  more private content (the ETEN family?) to Facebook. I want the Platform to be fun and unpredictable, but think the mingle and party pictures could create problems. We are a serious organisation. 

Where do they all come from?

How do they find us?

We have 233 subscribers, this means they get an email each time a new post is published. I don’t think We have that many random visitors who have Googled their way to the platform. I’m not sure about the value of these visitors. Perhaps someone with better SEO skills could ”search engine optimize” the platform? Though – checking the graf below (2023 – totally 46 000 visitors) almost 9000 visitors found us through search engines (sökmotorer). I think most visitors have a bookmark or type the adress.

What do the visitors read?

Compare these stats to my functions above ! We have to improve the Exchange pages.

Categories: 2024 Leeuwarden, Debate, Exchanges, News, TIGs