Gresham College Website with Free Lectures Drupalified; Another Win for Drupal in Education Sector
Emancipation of the masses through free dissemination of knowledge has been the way of life at Gresham college since its inception.
Founded by Sir Thomas Gresham, the college has been providing free public lectures since 1597. Today, the college brings in some of the world’s most brilliant minds to speak in fields across the arts and sciences. The institution is also one of the external organisations recommended by Oxford University.
Gresham College delivers free lectures for anybody worldwide keen to expand their knowledge. When an event is approaching, people can choose to watch it live, in person or online. The lecture is then made available to watch on-demand after the event.
The college engaged Un.titled to help revamp its website and enable more people to access the excellent content available within its lecture database. It included the creation of a new UX design (mindfully interpreting and extending the colleges existing brand). At the same time, the development team also conducted extensive UI and UX work and made significant enhancements to the site’s accessibility. And while the previous site was built on WordPress, Un.titled have re-platformed the site to Drupal 9.
Previously, Gresham College was struggling to get people to access the vast library of lectures and information available. As part of the project, they created a ‘You May Also Like’ feed, where content suggestions alternate regularly, rather than simply showing the same content repeatedly.
Some of the world’s most outstanding academics and brilliant minds have served as Gresham Professors, Visiting Professors and speakers over the past 400 years. Today, they deliver over 130 free public lectures each year. Based in the heart of London, the college includes the likes of Prof. Chris Whitty, David Olusoga and Prof. Katherine Blundell on its list of regular speakers.
The new site has personalised accounts for users, where an individual feed of events and lectures is available to enjoy. Account users can also build their playlists, including the content and videos that appeal most to them. There is also an enhanced search capability, with refined elements and a high level of detail to ensure the best results are displayed for users.
To achieve quicker load times, the new Gresham site uses a React App, which enhances the user experience significantly.
Gresham College also uses Vimeo and YouTube to deliver a high calibre of video quality. Vimeo and YouTube is being used as source information, and Gresham has a contract with Vimeo in place which means a chatbot can be operated and used to ask questions during a lecture, as well as making it easy to embed live video on the Gresham website.
Once the event is finished, the video is uploaded to YouTube, making it easy for people to watch it back.
The Gresham College team can also use the Mailchimp integration to manage email services, with the Un.titled team supporting a complex integration process.
“Gresham College is an institution that offers so much great free content to the public,”
explains Amanda Matthews, Project Manager at Un.titled.
“The college’s website however wasn’t making it easy for people to discover the full offering from the college. We have worked hard to not only revitalise the site from a UX and design perspective, but also provide easier access to lectures that can have a real impact on viewers. We’re delighted with the result.”
Access the site here:
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