One of our main objectives in the Digital Content team is to help people create content that’s accessible, easy to understand, and easy to find. But, in recent months and years, we’ve increasingly found ourselves spending a lot of time reviewing content, offering feedback (often unsolicited, to be fair), and trying to keep up with questions about which content type to use or how to structure a piece of content.
These are, admittedly, good problems for us to have. They show that Typecase users care about the content they're putting online and genuinely want to do it well. They also show that people see us as content experts (their words, not mine) and trust our experience enough to ask us for help.
The downside, apart from the time it takes us to review content and write feedback and advice, is that our input is just a drop in the proverbial bucket. Typecase users publish about 300 web pages every week,* but relatively few of them come to us for advice before publishing their content. Our little drop is drowning in that bucket (can a drop drown?), and the bucket is expanding all the time as more people get access to Typecase. How is this bucket expanding? I'm not sure. Who made it do that? I couldn't say. What made them think an unlimited bucket was a good idea? You'd have to ask them.
Expanding buckets aside (for now), having a devolved publishing model like this can lead to some serious issues. As a public-sector organisation, we're legally required to make sure our website content is accessible to anyone visiting the site. Unfortunately, not everyone who uses Typecase is aware of this requirement or how to make their content accessible. This could lead to legal action being taken against the University if inaccessible content is found during a government audit.
A little background info
For a long time, our only formal training for Typecase users was the initial Moodle course, which is designed to help people get started. It’s a solid introduction, covering the basics of using the platform and creating content, but we’ve known for a while that it’s not enough to help people understand all the nuances of creating accessible, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-find content.
After someone completes the Moodle training, they're made a Contributor in Typecase. Contributors can create and edit content items, but they can't publish them on their own. They need to ask an Author, Editor, or Admin to review and publish any changes they make.
Most University departments only need a couple of people who can publish web content. They usually have a few Contributors, an Author, and an Editor. Authors and Editors have slightly different roles in that Editors can unpublish content and change owning organisations, while Authors can't. You can read our guide about Typecase roles if you want to find out more.
This structure makes sure there's a system of checks to stop people publishing or unpublishing when they shouldn't. It's about due diligence — making sure someone takes responsibility for a department's web pages.
It used to be that, when someone needed to request a publishing role in Typecase (usually because a publisher in their team had left), they’d send us a few pages they’d worked on. We’d review the pages, provide feedback on accessibility, editorial style, and clarity, and then go through a cycle of revisions until we were confident they were ready to have publishing access. Then, we'd change their role to Author and set them free on Typecase.
While this process had good intentions (can a process have intentions?), it wasn’t ideal because we:
- couldn’t tell if people truly understood our feedback or were just making the changes we suggested
- only addressed the issues on the pages they submitted; we didn't tell them about anything they didn't show us
- weren’t teaching them about the responsibilities of publishing or how to review other people’s content
We needed a better method.
What we decided to do
We realised that the best cure is prevention, so we decided to develop some training for Typecase users who request publishing access.
We wanted the training to be delivered in person, to a room full of real people, in the real world, without a screen between us. In other words, IRL. This would give participants the chance to meet other Typecase users, work in pairs and as a group, and discuss their content there and then.
The training would need to cover everything a Typecase Author needs to know to create, edit, and review content for the website. It would help them understand what should and shouldn't go live, thus slowing the steady drip of water into the ever-expanding bucket.
There was so much we wanted the training to cover — accessibility, writing for the web, using media effectively, and more — and each topic could easily fill its own training session.
It was a daunting task.
To start with, we created a lesson plan, listing all the topics we thought we should include. We used that to create that classic tool of training sessions everywhere: a PowerPoint presentation.
The first iteration was a beast.
We went back to the lesson plan. We revised that, finding ways to tie topics together. We revised our presentation, making the slides simpler and less wordy. We went through round after round of iterations, reviews, test runs, and discussions, until eventually we'd honed in on a tight three-hour presentation that covers everything an aspiring Typecase Author needs to know.
What's in the box training?
The training covers:
- digital accessibility
- structured content
- choosing the website versus other platforms
- writing user stories for different types of content
- Typecase content types
- writing for the web
- formatting web content
- reviewing web content
- publishing web content
We also included five exercises throughout the training. These give participants the chance to try out the methods we explain and ask any questions they have. There's some audience participation too, but nothing cringey.
The strength of the training, if I may say so myself, is that it's based on our guidance, which covers everything you need to know if you create or edit website content. In fact, it's worth a read even if you're not a Typecase user but write content that gets turned into web pages, just so you know what works and what doesn't.
Post-training assessment
The training alone is useful, but it's important that we make sure the participants understand what we teach them.
After the training, we set the participants two assessment tasks. These tasks test their ability to:
- create new content
- review content and feedback on problems
We review these tasks and score each one based on the topics we covered in the training. We then send each participant an evaluation sheet which shows their score for each topic and provides feedback for any improvements.
In some cases, we need to ask people to redo their assessment tasks and direct them to our guidance (did I mention you should read our guidance?) so they can review their work against it.
In the unlikely event that someone isn't able to get a passing score, we'll suggest they redo the training.
What's next
We’ve run three training sessions so far, and the feedback from participants has been really positive.
We’re planning to run at least one session every seven weeks and have extended the invitation to existing Authors and Editors, offering them the chance to refresh their Typecase publishing skills. Lots of Typecase users have been on the system for almost a decade, so they've never had training that covered the 2018 accessibility legislation, or any guidance about how to use the newer Typecase features. The response to this has been great, and we currently have a waiting list of more than 20 Authors and Editors.
And we're not stopping there. We plan to create more training to cover the extra skills required for the Editor role, and to create more detailed sessions about:
- writing for the web
- accessibility
- using images, video, and audio effectively
We also appreciate that people learn in different ways, so we're planning to create training in a variety of formats, including:
- more in-person sessions
- more Moodle courses
- video guides
We’re excited about what’s ahead and committed to supporting our Typecase users in creating great content. We just need to find a way to stop that bucket from expanding.
In the meantime, you can find out if you're eligible to request Author role training and, if you have any questions about your content, email us at beta-content@bath.ac.uk
*According to me, counting the content items published over the last week.
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