Online Science Journal
Course Source
CourseSource is an online science journal, offering teaching resources for undergraduate biological sciences.
They publish articles of research, as well as information and guidelines on how to use this information in the classroom.
CourseSource was a new venture, and came to Electric Citizen looking to get started on the website that would function as the hub for their organization.
We began by working with client to plan how to best structure and develop a site with complex sets of data. Through meetings, wireframes, and sitemaps, we were able to determine how the site should be constructed, and allow users to find the information they wanted. Through style tiles, we established a design direction that complemented the biology subject matter – clean and clear, with a complementary color palette.
All the articles for CourseSource begin offsite, where they are peer-reviewed before being approved and published. The articles are distributed as XML files, which we then import into Drupal as nodes. Data is automatically then separated into various tabs and accordions, tagged appropriately and displayed under various predetermined categories.
We implemented powerful faceted search tools to help users find data they require. Lists of the most popular (by views) and most recent articles are automatically populated on the homepage, while various filter controls are available to locate articles by a variety of user criteria.
