Ontario EcoSchools Website & Online Community

DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

latop, tablet and phone displaying EcoSchools online community, website and newsletter

ROLE OVERVIEW

Strengthened Online Presence & Brand

School participation in the EcoSchools environmental education program tripled to over a third of all schools in Ontario during my time at EcoSchools which was focused on strengthening the program’s online presence and brand. My specific contributions were:

  • Online community design, development, management, maintenance and growth
  • Website redesign, development, updates and maintainence
  • Monthly newsletter design, development and management
  • Digital media library creation and management
latop, tablet and phone displaying EcoSchools online community, website and newsletter

Recommendation from EcoSchools

Raisa has an aptitude for design, always keeping the user in mind as well as organizational goals. She worked hard at creating a fresh, inviting, vibrant brand for Ontario EcoSchools.

She was instrumental in creating valuable tools for client/school engagement with our online community environment and oversaw the writing, formatting and delivery of our e-newsletter that was sent out to over 4500 readers each month.

Beyond the online community and newsletter, Raisa single-handedly managed our website in both design and content and ensured consistency in all Ontario EcoSchools print materials.

Raisa has been an asset to the Ontario EcoSchools team and I recommend her to organizations or companies looking for a dedicated, creative, engaged designer/developer or digital communications manager. Elanor Waslander, Program Director, Ontario EcoSchools

PROJECT RESPONSIBILITIES:

redesign | new information architecture | coding | content updates and maintenence | seo | supervision of french site creation | newsletter editor,writer, coder and distributor | best practices and digital media library creation and management | new features

Website & Newsletter

The EcoSchools website is filled with A LOT of information as the program is expansive, covering 6 areas of focus and achievement for schools: Teamwork & Leadership, Waste Minimization, Energy Conservation; School Ground Greening; Curriculum and Environmental Stewardship.

I redesigned the website in 2008 when I became the third staff member at EcoSchools. At that time the site was maintained externally in PHP and was not updatable by staff.

I created the new site in HTML and CSS and created updatable templates. My main goal for the site was to reflect the joy of the program that I saw celebrated by students and teachers when we would assess their application submissions and do school site visits at the end of the year, as well as make it quick and easy for program staff to communicate with the schools.

I changed the program colours to the more friendly and relevant blue and green and started collecting photos from the schools that would then be incorporated into our communications such as the website, guide covers and presentations to schools and school board representatives.

Monthly Newsletter

It was so inspiring to see and learn about what EcoTeams were doing at the schools that I wanted to be able to share these best practices among all the participating teachers and EcoTeams plus provide a human touch with the schools during the year so I created a monthly email newsletter that would tell these stories.

The newsletter grew to a circulation of 5000 educators across the province and was also posted to the EcoSchools homepage each time it came out.

Best Practices & Digital Media Library

Collecting the photos, videos and stories and refining them into best practices was an endeavour that got more complicated each year as the program grew and school submissions went up to 1500. Each year, interns were added and extra staff were hired just for assessing applications and going on site visits.

I created a system for assessors to recognize best practices and submit them to an intern to be compiled in spreadsheets. Then I would go through and refine the choices and set up a schedule for newsletter stories.

Teachers appreciated the shared best practices immensely and asked for more plus more contact with each other. So we decided to build an online community.
Image of website homepage with newsletter stories

PROJECT RESPONSIBILITIES:

user requirements | rfp & selection | user experience | wireframes | project management | site architecture | design decisions | content management | community manager | new features

COMMUNITY SITE

The EcoSchools Community site was developed to bring together school EcoTeams from across the province so they could share challenges and sucesses in a secure, private environment. I worked with the program team at EcoSchools, a team of outside developers and a pilot group of school users to bring the community to life. An open source platform was used for the framework. These pages will highlight the main areas of the community: the discussion forum, school scrapbooks, meeting rooms and wireframes for future best practice sharing.

community homepage

Forum

The forum was the area for members to exchange ideas, share best practices, network and support each other.

Posts could include photos, videos or documents and could be followed with email notifications, saved to a favourites folder and of course, could be “liked”.

Members could view the site in english or french and post in their preferred language. Both english and french posts were displayed in the same feed and could be translated with a click of a button.

Discussions were categorized by the sections of certification which were the program’s areas of focus and achievement for schools . They are Teamwork & Leadership, Waste Minimization, Energy Conservation; School Ground Greening; Curriculum and Environmental Stewardship. Each category had a list of discussion summaries that could be clicked on to read the full post. A latest activity feed displaying summaries from all posts that are recent was displayed on the categories page as well.

forum page

School Scrapbooks

Schools could document their journey with the EcoSchools program in their scrapbook. Entries were sorted by date and pages could be flipped through. As well as a keepsake for the EcoTeam’s year, other schools could view and comment on scrapbooks.

Scrapbooks from nearby schools and their latest activity were flagged on the left hand feed.

Proof of environmental actions and learning were required for EcoSchools certification and items from the scrapbooks theoretically could be used in the school’s application. However, applications were submitted through a completely different website and so the plan was to integrate the two in the future.

school scrapbooks page

Meeting Rooms

Online meeting rooms allowed schools to get together through teleconferencing software (Big Blue Button) for mentoring sessions, webinars or networking.

Meetings could be “open” where any member could drop in, or they could be “closed” which were by invite only.

meeting rooms page

Wireframes for Future Features

STAGE 1 - LIMITED SEARCH

A significant pain point for teachers using the EcoSchools program was that they already had a heavy workload and though they were passionate about the EcoSchools program, didn’t want the program to be a burden on top of that. Teachers needed to find and share best practices easily and quickly.

The first version of the community had limited search capabilities. Searches only looked at text within posts and did not include photos, videos or lesson plans that would be useful for finding best practices.

So in consultation with our developers on what was possible technically, I designed wireframes for an advanced search and best practices gallery that would allow many options for refining the search, including the certification section it applied to and the exact question in the application it correlated to.

As well it would search for EcoSchools verified best practices (verified by EcoSchools and not just the opinion of one EcoTeam), member name, school board, school, post type such as forum post/scrapbook/blog post/photo;/video/lesson plan/funding related information/speaker or presenter.

The first stage of development would have included the advanced search feature and display the results within posts.

As well, a strip displaying the latest best practices uploaded depicted as images would be inserted above the footer. The images would link to the post that included the best practices.

image of new feature wireframes - stage 1

Wireframes for Future Features

STAGE 2 - FULL SEARCH RESULTS

The second stage would now also display best practices separately as single images/videos/lesson plans. They woul have been enetered specifically as a best practice or highlighted from an existing discussion post or scrapbook entry. The thumbnails would link to the details of the best practice itself (the best practices gallery) with tips for implementation.

The best practices image strip above the footer would now give a choice to link to either the original post (if applicable) or the best practices gallery.Which we look at next and last.

image of new feature wireframes - stage 2

STAGE 2 - RESULT DETAIL

The best practices gallery would display images and videos of best practices in a large format for easy viewing. A description and steps for implementing the practice would be displayed. Arrows allow scrolling through the search results so multiple ideas can be explored.

image of new feature wireframes - stage 2