Website Takes Flight

Elevator not working, or just incredibly slow, we climbed two flights of stairs and were met with the words: FLIGHT SIMULATION ROOM. Five windows, curtained with black sheets, our curiosity was peaked. One of us piped up, “We’re here for the website retreat, not flight simulation.” Okay, the retreat wasn’t aviation, but it was the next best thing. We were at Mount Royal University to hunker down and complete phase one development of the Foundational Learning Curriculum website. After several months of building visuals, writing content, and adjusting layouts for the website, our retreat agenda was as follows:

Stage One: To be completed before and during retreat

• needs assessment of website pages, sections and content
• review list of tasks
• set out revision plan

Stage Two: Completed at retreat

• action phase
• create remaining website content
• documents for website
• develop creation, style, and structure guidelines for website

Stage Three: Ongoing

• looking forward for future revisions and development
• goals and plans for website

On the day of the retreat, we used our Website Style Guide and Website Structure Guide, to document changes, ensure consistency, and make decisions. We reviewed our website pages to check that they met the requirements set out by our style guide. We looked at the little details, such as font sizes, font colours, and margin widths. We looked at bigger details, such as our visuals and content. We checked links to our Google docs and made note of documents that still needed revisions. In our Tasks document, we noted any additional work that needed to be done before our website launch at Share the Wealth. By the end of the day, we had fleshed out the bones of the website and we realized that work on a website is never really done. There is always going to be new content to add or a new widget to embed, but a website is about communication and will always need updating. After our work at the retreat, we are one step closer to having an engaging site that supports our communications in Foundational Learning and we can’t wait to share it with you.

We never did make it into the flight simulation room - rumour has it we weren’t allowed in there anyway - but we ate some good food, worked well together, and laughed in between. Thank you so much to Maureen Stewart for setting up and organizing the retreat. Working together, we really took flight.