Ball State's interactive student recruitment initiative using blogs and podcasts continues to attract national attention.

This time it's from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), which bestowed a silver Circle of Excellence Award to Ball State in the Web site category for its Experience Ball State site (www.bsu.edu/reallife).

Because CASE is the professional organization for marketing and communications professionals in higher education, recognition from the organization is significant, said Nancy Prater, Ball State's university Web coordinator.

"The response to our blog site has been amazing over the past year. During the spring semester, the site was averaging about 11,000 visits per day," she said. "Plus, we have been asked to attend several marketing and communications conferences to talk about what we have done here at Ball State."

The blogs are true interactive, multimedia experiences with students posting weekly updates of text, photos, audio and video. With audio files and text, RSS feeds can be used so the files can be podcast and listened to via computer or MP3 player.

In their awards report, the judges credited Ball State's site for "doing what it's supposed to do."

Judges noted that the site is designed to help students understand what life on campus is like by sharing blogs, podcasts and other original content. "Yes, some of the content is banal - but perspective students like this sort of unfiltered content and are coming to the site to read, watch and interact with the bloggers," according to the judges' critique.

The judges' evaluation also noted that visitors were bookmarking sites "and intriguingly, visitors who identified themselves were accepted students or students in eighth or ninth grade who were getting an early taste of what BSU had to offer."

CASE judges reviewed 101 entries in the Web site category for this year's competition, which was open to the more than 3,200 member institutions worldwide.

Judges noted in their report that the competition in the Web site category is rigorous, and winning is difficult because details are important and small mistakes stand out as they critiqued sites for sound strategy, navigability and usability, effective content development and deployment, distinct or appropriate design, technology used on the site and results.

"We also look at whether the site does something particularly interesting or unusual," said Michael Stoner, president of mStoner and chairman of this year's CASE awards panel.

"It's easy to make a site look good - and there were many examples of sites that presented a welcoming appearance, but broke down a click below the enticing home page, lacking good information architecture or real content," Stoner said. "We ask, 'Is the site distinctive? Does it convey something about the institution it represents?'"