# User Experience, Functionality and Aesthetics Evaluation in an Academic Multi-Site Web Ecosystem
## 2 Literature Review
### Academic Institutions as Content Providers  
Within the spectrum of organizational classifications, academic institutions represent a distinct category, embodying roles as educational entities, hubs of scientific discourse, research institutions, and in some cases, corporate entities, among other designations ([PERSON] et al., 2018). Academic institutions, like other organizations, have the primary objective of communicating information ([PERSON] and [PERSON], 2018). Information regarding students, instructors, researchers, and administrative staff may be communicated at the university level in a manner that depends on the perspective of the stakeholders ([PERSON] et al., 2018). Academic information that concerns both the academic community and the general public is increasingly provided to users through the Web. This information includes research or educational activities, learning resources, and multiple other subjects that concern a wide variety of visitors. These visitors have different levels of technological aptitude, goals, and usage patterns, so academic websites need to be designed with everyone in mind ([PERSON] et al., 2018).  
Moreover, Internet content consumers seek not merely any content but rather information that is timely, relevant, legitimate, accurate, and comprehensive, and in response to this imperative, the use of WCMSs in an academic environment has become a necessity ([PERSON] and [PERSON], 2018). This use brings many challenges, including the incorporation of curricula ([PERSON] et al., 2018) and the proper use of access management in both informational ([PERSON] et al., 2018) and research-related content ([PERSON] et al., 2018). A subset of WCMSs with a focus on educational activities are learning management systems (LMSs) ([PERSON] et al., 2018). These are specialized authoring tools that include multiple systems for managing educational information ([PERSON] et al., 2018; [PERSON] et al., 2018) and boast a variety of interactive learning tools, ranging from static learning material to interactive multimedia edutainment experiences ([PERSON] et al., 2018; [PERSON] et al., 2018). As demand grows, the availability and quality of such tools correspondingly expand to meet the rising requirements in this domain [33], with the focus remaining on course management, administration, and student-teacher network interaction, through an easy-to-use interface [34]. The online Web presence of academic institutions often works alongside LMSs and shares some of their management needs and characteristics.  
[PERSON] [35] asserts that one frequent theme in the field of academic content management is the difficulty of collaboration between academic libraries and the offices involved in website administration. This difficulty extends to other relationships within complex academic ecosystems. [PERSON] et al.'s study in the field of interdisciplinary collaboration suggests that efforts toward better collaboration also serve departmental and disciplinary interests [36]. In a similar vein, the academic multi-site Web ecosystem that is evaluated in this study was developed as a means to address the challenge of collaboration in a manner that goes beyond simple workflow and access control. This ecosystem is concisely presented in the following section.