Request for Proposal for the:

UvA Teaching & Learning Centre Wordpress website

Januari 2020
Contact person: Nynke Kruiderink kruiderink@uva.nl

Brief Project Overview .......................................................................................................................... 2

Project Goals & Target Audience & Conversions ................................................................................ 2
Sitemap & Information Architecture ..................................................................................................... 2
Scope of Work & Deliverables.............................................................................................................. 3
Timeline................................................................................................................................................. 4
Technical Requirements ........................................................................................................................ 4
Budget.................................................................................................................................................... 5
Web Hosting .......................................................................................................................................... 5
Analytics ................................................................................................................................................ 5
Web Design Examples .......................................................................................................................... 5
Submission ............................................................................................................................................ 5
Brief Project Overview

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) has recently launched faculty based Teaching and Learning
Centres (TLC) and a central TLC team for it’s teachers and teaching at the research based university.
The UvA has seven faculties spread over 3 campusses in Amsterdam where it hosts approximately
6000 staff members and 35000 students. It is one of the largest universities in the Netherlands.

The Teaching and Learning Centre’s each have as it’s goal to facilitate and improve teaching and
learning within their faculty and the central team aims to help them in their different endeavours and
approaches. This will be a combination of sharing knowledge within and across the faculties,
organizing workshops and training and building a network of expertise within the University and
within the faculties.

The website will aim to facilitate these aims by providing a platform where organized events can
gain exposure, and where support materials and experiences are shared. The resource of information
shared within the website should be considered as a growing database of teaching and learning
knowledge and information which needs to be searchable and browsable in the future, also according
to the shifting needs of the future and different needs of the varying visitors.

Project Goals & Target Audience & Conversions

There is a lot of knowledge on teaching and learning within the UvA, but there is no single platform
where this is consolidated and shared in a comprehensive and coherent way. A quick scan in the
organisation shows several different committees, teams, initiatives and newsletters which share
information, support materials and events on teaching and learning. Some are very basic, some
innovative, all are useful for different teachers at different times and forms of teaching.

With this new website we hope to provide a “go to” channel for UvA teachers where they can find
help and information to tackle their teaching problems, to find inspiration for new ways of teaching,
for workshops and training, and know who to contact for further information. The seven faculties
will share information on this platform, some of which will be relevant and interchangeable over
faculties and some will be relevant only within a faculty or even study programme. And then it can
be inspiring for teachers from other universities whom can also benefit from this information and
who can subsequently also be inspired to contact staff at the UvA for further knowledgesharing or
mutually beneficial networking.

The website is meant for UvA staff, but the content can be shared with a worldwide network, to
demonstrate and exemplify how important high-quality teaching and learning is for the UvA. Some
internally focused information will link to detailed manuals and tutorials, these might be hosted
behind logins on the internal websites of the UvA, such as Canvas or it’s intranet.

Sitemap & Information Architecture

As described above, the TLC’s are faculty based and as such the seven faculties within the UvA have
to be clearly visible and identifiable on the website. Each Faculty needs its own landing page with its
own personalized header and it’s own menu structure. Each faculty should have as much
individuality as possible in the available content and manner of presenting the content. The entire
website must be bilingual. The faculty URLs should be:
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1. http://tlc.uva.nl/fnwi 5. http://tlc.uva.nl/acta
2. http://tlc.uva.nl/fgw 6. http://tlc.uva.nl/fdr
3. http://tlc.uva.nl/fmg 7. http://tlc.uva.nl/amc
4. http://tlc.uva.nl/feb

Across the faculties we will have some standard types of information which we hope to share with
teachers. These have for now been identified as:

• Best practices • Opportunities for Training

• News • Events
• Tutorials

The thematic content which we will exhibit and explore in these different information types have
been for now identified as for example:

• Assessment • Didactical themes

• Feedback • Peer review
• Course Design • Blended Learning

We expect the information types to be adapted after one year of use, and afterwards become
reasonable stable. The themes will continuously be adapted and added to. Possibly based on
grouping/reorganizing freely used tags. Tagging should be made possible throughout all the content,
and an end user should be able to browse through the website based on a free combination of all the
variables above. An intuitive and effective search should also be possible.

The information architecture should be built keeping in mind that time adds new insights, and
content will have to be reorganized over 2-3 years, to make it more relevant for teachers at that time.

We expect visitors to consume the content in primarily 3 different ways:

• by being triggered what they see on the homepage and click to read more
• by searching on specific keywords
• by browsing through thematic content or rather the taxonomy of the website, acessible &
visible via the homepage

In every instance a visitor should have the option to view content which is:
• specific to one (their) faculty
• not specific to one (their) faculty

Scope of Work & Deliverables

This project is initially the launching of a new website. That is the design, information architecture,
and execution in a wordpress website. The website has to be accessible according to industry
standards. We will be using open source and open access content on the website. It must be cross
platform compatible and accessible on mobile devices. Illustrations can for a large part be provided
by the UvA.
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We have one faculty which has built its own faculty TLC website and has content we can initially
demo to build the UvA TLC website.

The deliverables we expect between the RFP and launch are:

• An initial proposal which shows comprehension of the project, examples of skills
and a cultural organizational match with a large knowledge sector and public sector
based organisation
• A website design (wireframes) developed together using the styleguidelines
exhibited here: https://uva-tlc.webflow.io/
• An information architectural design fully documented and described
• A wordpress template which the UvA owns or which is open source
• A brief description of the template and how to update some basics
• A launched wordpress website with demo content from at least one faculty
• A proposal for hosting and updates

We expect this project to be iterative in that we initially launch a completely new website and within
the first year there will probably be regular requests for change. After that we hope to continue a
cooperation in the form of website maintenance, security updates and occasional requests for change.
We prefer a partner company with a broad knowledge base and enough staff to ensure continued
support which does not rely on only one person.

Timeline

We expect to receive your Proposal by February 10th 08:00 AM, and will send you a reply by
February 12th.

After an agreement is signed between both parties we expect a soft launch of the website after two
months time.

Technical Requirements

• We expect the website to be built in wordpress. This is compatible to other resources we

have within the UvA and is a very flexible and user frienldy content management system.
The wordpress must be built with a theme which is open source (either own build or
resourced) and with a childtheme
• We expect the website to have a high compliance level with the WCAG
• As mentioned above we expect a strong information architecture to facilitate effective
searching and browsing through the website
• We expect the website to be industry standard responsive over different platforms and
devices
• Implementation of some form of analytics, such as google analytics will be necessary to
measure usage

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Budget

The budget for this project is between 5000 €- and - 8000 € excl BTW for the launch, and half that
for the first year of implementation to continue improvements. Afterwards we expect an annual sum
of about 1000€ to cover hosting, bug fixing and server maintenance (updates of wordpress) costs.

Web Hosting

Suggestions for hosting are welcome. In house is possible and has already been realized. We have a
wordpress hosted on a webserver.

Analytics

We think google analytics will suffice, but are open to suggestions

Web Design Examples

https://uva-tlc.webflow.io
This website demonstrates the style gyuidelines already agreed upon for th eteaching and
learning centre for the UvA. Some innovations are possible while respecting the work and
decisions already taken.
https://educate-it.uu.nl
The look and feel is quite busy and overwhelming but this website demonstrates the diversity
of content we also hope to provide.

Submission

Please send your request for proposal to Nynke Kruiderink, kruiderink@uva.nl with “RFP TLC
website” in the subject before Monday February 10th 08:00 Am. We will send a reply by February
12th.

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