Technical Writing Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 128 technical writing schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 124 technical writing schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 97% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 69.5% of the 128 technical writing schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 9.4% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (7.8%), black (5.5%) and yellow (3.9%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on technical writing school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest technical writing schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: grey 49%
2. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
3. University of Central Florida: white 46% and black 1.6%

Font

The largest number, nearly 50%, of technical writing school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on technical writing school websites include Verdana (21.9%) and Helvetica (9.4%).

The largest technical writing school's websites use the following fonts:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: Arial
2. Arizona State University: Arial
3. University of Central Florida: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 96 technical writing schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 476 YouTube channel subscribers. The technical writing schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
2. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 2,942 subscribers
3. Pennsylvania State University - Main Campus: 2,357 subscribers

Exactly 113 technical writing schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,532 Twitter account followers. The technical writing schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 26,204 followers
2. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers
3. Texas A & M University - College Station: 19,518 followers

Web Metrics

Although all technical writing schools have websites, only about 15% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 85.7% of technical writing school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The technical writing schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Eastern Washington University: 4,378 broken links
2. The University of Findlay: 1,219 broken links
3. Michigan Technological University: 918 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on technical writing school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The technical writing school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Pima Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Gwinnett Technical College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Pennsylvania State University - Main Campus: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The technical writing school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. University of Colorado Denver: 0 HTML validation errors; 794 CSS validation errors
2. Winthrop University: 365 HTML validation errors; 99 CSS validation errors
3. Metropolitan State University: 435 HTML validation errors; 5 CSS validation errors