Case Studies

The IBO is a non-profit educational foundation with its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, with offices in Cardiff, New York, Buenos Aires and Singapore. It offers three programmes of study to schools: the Diploma Programme (DP) for students in the final two years of secondary school, the Middle Years Programme (MYP) for students in the 11 to 16 age range, and the Primary Years Programme (PYP) for children aged 3 to 12.

There are currently over 1,700 schools in more than 122 countries that are authorized to offer the three IB programmes. These schools are evenly divided between private (mainly international schools) and state schools. To run these programmes the IBO publishes curricular, examination and administrative material and provides a wide range of educational services including teacher training, online resources and an examination system for student assessment leading to certification.

Brief Requirements

The aim of the project was to redesign the IBO public web site to meet the needs of the stakeholders in terms of content, navigation and accessibility, and to present a professional online representation of the organization.

The stakeholder groups included parents, teachers, head teachers, pupils, examiners, staff, universities and journalists.

Solution

The solution involved using Adobe Contribute and Adobe Coldfusion, which allowed IBO’s in-house staff to manage the site content. A visual design was approved and Creo produced a number of different Contribute templates.

Navigation

The IBO was a complex site; to ensure an easy navigation system we used a drop down menu for primary navigation combined with a secondary side menu. A number of jump menus were also used to take the user to specific parts of the site.  
 
A key requirement was a full text search engine, capable of indexing PDF documents, which was to be available on every page. The IBO site uses the best-of-breed Verity technology.

Security

Password protected areas of the site were authenticated using a LDAP system which was encrypted using SSL.

Support

Creo continued to support the IBO public website team with ColdFusion programming, which was contracted at an hourly rate.