Module Update Project

Modules are the building blocks of our courses. Whether they’re core or chosen, they represent how we deliver our courses, and what students will learn during their time with us. They are, therefore, hugely important in helping students – prospective and current – choose what to study and where. 

Many universities spend a lot of time, effort, and resources in marketing their courses, but one of the most useful places to do so is the course and module web pages – particularly in a world where search engines, chatbots, and AI are crawling written information on the web to serve to audiences when they perform a search. 

We are currently embarking on a project to update every live module on the site, as well as every course page to ensure maximum impact in the modern digital landscape. It’s a big project, but we know it will have huge impact on our positioning and visibility among prospective students. 

Why are we running the project?

Last year (2025) saw our course and module pages generate over 4,650,000 views. That’s potentially 4,650,000 opportunities to engage, excite, and influence a prospective student into choosing Dundee. 

But if they land on a page with no information – like many of our module pages currently – we're missing an opportunity to share what is great about studying at Dundee.

User experience is therefore the fundamental underpinning of this project – we want our audiences to have ready access to the correct information and help them make their decision. We also want to position ourselves and our course and module offerings as purposefully as possible. 

There are also other specific reasons we’re working on this, related to the ways in which information is presented and collated digitally. 

• SEO and GEO results - statistics suggest that only 40% of people who make a search on Google or similar search engines ever click through to a website. That means 60% of people will only read the information on the search results page and in particular the AI generated snippet at the top. In addition we are seeing a change in behaviour where users are moving to utilise AI like ChatGPT in their research and never transitioning through to the website. We therefore are optimising our pages to ensure they are picked up correctly and give the best answers. This requires writing content in a way that speaks to AI models as well as humans, and will become ever more important if we are to reach audiences who are searching for courses we offer. 
• Chatbot - to support colleagues in our Enquiry team, who deal with a substantial number of queries every day, and ensure fast customer service for those submitting a query, we are using a chatbot to respond to routine questions. The Chatbot has been trained on the information on the website – including course and module web pages – and as we monitor the conversations taking place we are updating information to better serve this more conversational audience.
• Marketing legislation - the Competition and Markets Authority (CAM) advises that to comply with consumer protection legislation, particularly Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, universities should provide module information for each course, including core and optional modules. 

How can module leads help? 

Our team has set up an automated workflow to process module updates. The workflow will give you access to a Word document for your module via email, and also send you reminders via emails. Phase 1 involves updating almost 1,000 modules that lack information but are currently live on the website. 

If your modules are in the category of live on the web but without information, you'll receive an email inviting you to start populating your module document. You then need to:

• Add the relevant content. The document is broken into headers and word counts, and it includes information to help you with each section.
• Once you've completed all sections, send the document to us using the link within the document. We will then edit for clarity - we may send the document back to you if we need more information. You'll receive an email with a link to it if we do.
• Once content is finalised and proofread, we’ll publish it on the website (this may take time due to the volume of modules we're processing, but we will be actioning this work as a priority).

How much work is involved?

For each module, we require:

• an overview (around 100-200 words)
• what you will learn - bullet-pointed lists about module content and the learning outcomes for students
• assignments/assessments - a bullet-pointed list of assessment modes 
• teaching methods / timestable - brief detail on teaching delivery, e.g. lectures, workshops, practical sessions

A good example of a fully populated module is Front End Website Development. You can also read our guide on writing a good module description for more information.

Need help finding time to do this?

Our team are happy to set up time to do paired writing – where a member of our Web or Marketing team can sit with you to work collaboratively on your module content. We find paired writing gives focused time to work collaboratively, and generally delivers results faster, especially as it avoids passing content back and forth virtually and getting lost in email inboxes.

How are we monitoring progress? 

We’re setting up a dashboard to monitor progress – this will be available to all colleagues so that you can see progress in your subject or Faculty area. We’ll share a link to that when it’s ready. 

This project has been identified as a University-wide priority by UEG so regular reporting and progress updates will be shared at this level. 

What’s next? 

We’re hoping to have made significant progress on this project by summer and will then identify other modules to work on as part of Phase 2. These will likely be modules live on the website with only basic content. We will also soon be scaling out a similar workflow to our course pages. 

This is a large ongoing project that will require input from colleagues across the University - but our combined time and effort will support our student recruitment efforts and ensure prospective students find out the right information about us when they need it in their decision-making process.