Skills Builder

Not-for-profit social enterprise the Skills Builder Partnership has a shining purpose: to help all young people to develop the skills they need to thrive.

To do this, the Skills Builder Framework rationalises all these essential skills into a structure that educators from the 700 schools, colleges, employers and youth organisations that form the partnership can use to guide young people through the steps.

Understandably, a great website is crucial. But although it was packed with ever-evolving resources, it was pretty basic and difficult to navigate. An essential assessment tool sat separately and users were frustrated by the poor search capabilities of Microsoft Sharepoint, the CMS behind the site.

Skills Builder wanted to grow and reach more children. But they couldn’t do that without a new website, equipped with integrated assessment, better search, improved usability and overall simplicity. But with so many different innovative resources on offer, who – and what – could cope?

Clearly, a new content delivery system was essential. With each pack of Skills Builder content made up of many webpages, videos, and graphics, this complex combination of resources had led to a confusing and complicated interface on the existing website and needed to be drastically improved.

We reviewed the software Skills Builder was using to tie together its CMS with its content production tools. We recognised that the resources would be better displayed and managed if they were on a platform built using a more capable CMS, so we turned to Wagtail.

Wagtail’s our CMS of choice when it comes to producing content-rich websites with excellent UX at their heart. We’re one of the largest agencies in the UK to regularly deploy it and were responsible for its largest early implementation when we built The Key.

We were confident that Wagtail could not only manage Skills Builder’s content in a much more intuitive way, we’d be able to add some useful new features too.

Research is an essential part of every project we take on. To understand exactly what Skills Builder meant to educators, we visited schools, interviewed a broad selection of teachers and lead consultants, and watched the resources being delivered in classrooms.

We wanted to see how educators used the Skills Builder website and investigate their regular habits and behaviours. Just as importantly, we needed to understand their frustrations and the limitations they were experiencing.

Combining this invaluable insight with our experiences of designing other systems for education (including The Key and Pebble), we prepared the wireframes for the new Skills Builder site. Our goal? To make sure the new platform would meet and exceed the needs and expectations of its audience.

The switch was a success. The power of Wagtail, plus our deep understanding of its capabilities and user needs, mean that today, Skills Builder users can:

• Manage content and control who has access to it
• Keep online records and measure progress – displayed through easy-to-understand visuals
• Search for content using filter options, such as resource type, activity type, and length of activity
• Add resources and activities to a personalised favourites tab
• Review content using in-classroom views
• Assess against the framework, preview, and edit content prior to in-classroom presentation

Case study

Sofia: Data fit for doctors

The intricate dance of curriculum mapping for medical students at Imperial College posed unique challenges. Generic software solutions failed to provide the desired depth and interconnectivity.

Enter Sofia – a bespoke tool that not only streamlined curriculum mapping but also fostered an interactive learning journey. From understanding contextual content connections to offering real-time feedback, Sofia transformed the landscape of medical education at Imperial.

Explore the Sofia project