Websites and Social Media
Communications
Social Media
The marketing and communications team serve as experts in social media to work strategically to expand the College of Medicine’s online and digital presence. With approved College of Medicine platforms on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, this team can assist in strategies to help meet your goals, including clinical trial recruitment, student recruitment, promotion of research discoveries, etc. Social media is a powerful communication and community-building tool, however, the freedom with which information can be exchanged through these sites comes with personal and institutional responsibilities. That’s why we created a Penn State Health/College of Medicine Social Media Policy and Social Media Governance Committee to help manage the various needs of both organizations.
The Penn State College of Medicine/Penn State Health Social Media Policy (ePass login required) is intended to be a helpful tool for the college and affiliated social media accounts.
These guidelines should be considered in addition to the behavioral standards, laws, professional expectations, and student conduct policies that govern interactions on campus—including, but not limited to:
- Copyright Law and Compliance
- Student Code of Conduct
College of Medicine social media accounts are maintained by the Penn State Health/College of Medicine social media specialists.
If you need assistance, please fill out one of the following forms (Workfront access required).
Website policies, procedures and guidelines
Website Redesign Project
Penn State College of Medicine is proud to be the first college to pilot a new website structure set forth by the University, with a planned Phase 1 launch in March 2025.
- View the website redesign project information site in SharePoint. Note: A Penn State login is required. If you are already logged into Office 365 with Penn State Health, you will need to log out or use a different browser or incognito window.
Beginning Nov. 15, 2024, web champions within departments, programs and other units of the college are auditing content. Please reach out to your unit's web champion with questions.
- View the web champions list with a Penn State Health ePass login
- View the web champions list with a Penn State University login
Requesting or updating college web sites
Requests for new websites, website updates, web forms and more are submitted through Workfront, the marketing and communication team's project management system.
Those who do not have a guest account and need to submit a request can get started here.
Once logged into Workfront, go to Requests and click "New Request." There will be several dropdown menus to get to the correct request type:
- First dropdown menu: Select Marketing Request Queue
- Second dropdown menu: Select Web Request (College of Medicine)
- Third dropdown menu: Select the specific request type. Examples of request types include:
- Access Request - request access to submit events to the central campus calendar at pennstatehealthnews.org/events. (Note: Existing access to submit events has not changed).
- Change to a Website Request - request general changes or updates to College of Medicine websites
- Directory/Contact Update - submit updates to directory/people listings and/or contact information on a website (excluding Pure)
- Web Form - request a new web form for event registration or other purposes, or submit changes to an existing form
- Web Strategy Consultation - request guidance from the marketing and web team on a new or updated website
Changes and requests related to web pages in Pure (pure.psu.edu) (the Penn State Research Portal) must be submitted to the Pure team.
College of Medicine policy on websites
Any website or webpage regarding Penn State College of Medicine must abide by University and College of Medicine/Penn State Health policies. No program, entity or individual representing the College of Medicine may create a website without prior express approval from Marketing and Communications.
Requests for websites and web pages will be reviewed by the Marketing and Communications team. Use the Web Strategy Consultation request form as detailed in the "Requesting or updating college web sites" section. Standard operating procedure for these requests is as follows:
- If the website/webpage is for an official group, program, office, institute, center or publication of the University, the health system or the College of Medicine, it will sit as part of a central site managed by the marketing web solutions team, generally using med.psu.edu or one of its subdomains. This includes student organizations, all of which can have pages/sections on the COM sites, as well as all offices, departments, divisions, centers, institutes and publications.
- If the website/webpage reflects work involving multiple investigators/faculty, OR if it involves human subjects research, it also will sit as part of a central site managed by web solutions.
- If the work is research, non-human-subjects, done by a single investigator, the request will be reviewed and Marketing and Communications will determine whether the investigator may create a minisite on the University’s sites.psu.edu platform. This may not be done until approved by Marketing and Communications. If approved, the following guidelines must be followed:
- Site must use one of the Penn State themes provided without design modifications (click on Appearance, then Themes, then Penn State).
- Note: As of September 2022, the PSU Genesis theme has been retired by the university and is only available on sites that already have it activated. New sites will need to use the Divi for PSU theme.
- Site must include a link to the investigator’s department’s centralized web presence in the top navigation menu.
- A “Publications” link in the top navigation menu must link directly to the investigator’s Pure profile.
- Job postings, including postdoctoral positions, must link to the appropriate HR posting in Workday for submission of applications.
- A user from the college marketing web team (Matt Eyer - mje151) must be added as an administrator.
- Site must use one of the Penn State themes provided without design modifications (click on Appearance, then Themes, then Penn State).
Use of Web Forms for Registration, Surveys and Data Collection
Marketing-approved tools must be used for web forms for registration, surveys and other means of collecting data. Approved tools include:
- Form Assembly web forms: Created by web team and requested via Workfront.
- REDCap: This is a self-service tool that is compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). View details on getting access and support.
- Zoom's or Teams' webinar or meeting registration feature.
- Microsoft Forms: Approved for internal use; forms must require login to access. Default theme should be used, or a theme using blue and gray colors. Microsoft Forms are self-service only; support is available through the IT help desk.
Accessibility
Penn State has adopted widely accepted international and national accessibility standards and guidelines in order to ensure compliance with federal laws and regulations, particularly Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Policy AD69 on Accessibility of Electronic and Information Technology requires conformance to the following:
- W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.0 (or current version)
- WCAG2ICT Guidance on Applying WCAG 2.0 to Non-Web Information and Communications Technologies (or current version)
- AIM-HEA Accessible Instructional Materials in Higher Education Act (in development and pending legislative approval)
Penn State provides online guides and training through accessibility.psu.edu.
- Website accessibility
- Avoiding use of PDFs as the sole source of online information
- Microsoft Office accessibility: Word, Powerpoint and Excel
- Email accessibility
- Social media accessibility
- Making course content accessible
Other Key Policies
The College of Medicine's websites must follow applicable University policy, including: