Making use of video: Wall of 100 Faces

By 2008 we were pleased with the restructuring and redesign of the main University website but felt that we were falling behind in the rapidly growing area of online video. Colleagues across the University were consulted for their views and a shortlist of priority film projects was created. Since this would be a pilot to test our assumption about the effectiveness of video we only advertised for a freelance film maker to work with us for 3 days a week for approximately 6 months. We appointed Hannah Madsen. Hannah made several series of films, including interviews with researchers and student activities at Oxford, all of which were well received; however, the most ambitious and highest profile was The Wall of 100 Faces.

Average Oxford student

The Wall is 100 short videos, mostly 1 minute or less, of current students talking about an aspect of their time at Oxford. There is no overarching editorial stance on the subjects spoken about. The point is to give prospective students, staff, media or interested visitors a chance to ‘meet’ the students and to see what an average Oxford student is like.

There is a mix of undergraduate and graduate students, from UK and overseas, studying many different subjects, involved in many different extra-curricular activities and from almost all the colleges and halls.

We felt that the wide range of students would show the great diversity within the University and go some way to diminishing some of the stereotypes that still persist about Oxford.

Users are able to filter the Wall to show only undergraduates or graduates, or international students, and whether they are mainly talking about their studies or what they do outside of studying. Since it launched in June 2009 it has been widely blogged, facebooked and tweeted about and, up to January 2011, it had received more than 165,000 visitors. Several universities, both UK and overseas, have contacted us to ask about it and our process. It was shortlisted for a Digi Award – Best use of video – in 2010.

Future developments

Following on from the success of this we have created the post of Online Media Producer. Our aim is to add 30 new films to the Wall each academic year. 29 new films replaced some of the originals in October 2010 and the project continues.

The design of the Wall was done in house, the web development company Torchbox undertook the technical implementation (HTML structure, JavaScript and video player embed), Hannah produced all the films and they are hosted on Amazon CloudFront. In February 2011 the video player was upgraded to use HTML 5 for use on Apple iPhones, iPod Touchs and iPads.

Quotes

I think the Wall of 100 Faces is brilliant.
Professor T. P. Softley, MPLS

I confess I have been utterly smitten by the Wall of 100 Faces. The videos are professional, well conceived and produced, and are highly communicative and evocative. What a fantastic project!
Helena Snow, Director of Communications, Rhodes Trust

I've already been raving to others about the wall- it's fantastic, and I particularly like the way you can select sub-groups. It's a brilliant introduction to Oxford, and quite addictive.
Angus McKendrick, Careers Service

That is really awesome – and the production quality on them is superb. You guys have done a really good job.
Lacy Tite, Vanderbilt University

The Wall of 100 Faces is simply extraordinary. It clearly serves as a powerful tool for anyone to directly connect to the students of Oxford.
Sheryl Abad, University of Miami