Toronto School of Theology: Education That Values Diversity
- Education
The Toronto School of Theology (TST) is a consortium of seven theological schools affiliated with the University of Toronto. They are focused on the achievement of excellence in research, scholarship, and teaching. Each member college and affiliated institution has a distinct history, denominational connection, community spirit, and theological approach.
the challenge
Migrating from Drupal 7
When TST approached us, their website was on Drupal 7 which was reaching its end of life and needed to be updated. While the primary focus was platforming, there was also an opportunity to update the site’s design structure to improve wayfinding and create a much more modern web experience for TST’s current and prospective students, faculty and administration.
Client
- Toronto School of Theology
Sector
- Education
Service
- User Experience
- Design
- Development
Technology
- Drupal
the solution
Modern Drupal
We built the new site in Drupal 9, followed by an update to Drupal 10 when that version was stable. Compared to the former Drupal 7 site, this newer version of Drupal provides improved site performance, enhanced security, and friendlier user interfaces for content authors and end users alike. Staying up-to-date with current versions of Drupal ensures the platform is well-supported by the Drupal community, and that we, in turn, can ensure the site’s health has the best protection available.
Effective wayfinding through new landing pages
Landing pages are an important part of the user flow of a site, guiding users to the information they’re seeking. On the TST site, we developed landing pages to address some of the pain points of the former site and provide a smoother, more intuitive flow. The Programs page, for example, is a highly viewed page that should give students enough information to get to the program of their choice without extra clicks. Using a new layout, this page now provides help “at a glance” information to guide the user to the correct program.
Course information
Course and program information is a top priority in any post-secondary or other educational institution. For TST, we needed to showcase the course information in a way that was curated and easily filterable. We created the course catalogue with general information, a listing of filters, and ways for the school to indicate a course status easily. As course data often changes, we built the platform to allow simple CSV imports, which created efficiency and reduced the need for site administrators to manually enter content.
Improved design
We incorporated new elements of the TST brand on the site. The colour palette provided more visual interest to the new page templates while staying true to TST’s established brand. Using the colours to represent functional elements like calls to action (CTAs) and buttons helped both aesthetics and overall user experience.
