Arts Alliance Illinois
The Arts and Education Exchange home page.
Geographic areas the exchange serves are broken down by region.
The site also features a robust forum for exchanging ideas.
An example of an Arts Provider Profile page.
Educators and arts providers gain a valuable resource for bringing new forms of art curriculum to Illinois classrooms.
Sponsored by Arts Alliance Illinois (AAI) and numerous other Illinois arts education organizations, the Arts and Education Exchange helps educators associated with 879 school districts in the state of Illinois find programs for their classrooms while also connecting arts providers and arts organizations with educators.
OUR APPROACH
We kicked the project off by defining a clear list of business goals for building this robust web application. We then set about creating an extensive set of wireframes that outlined specific user task flows necessary to meet each business goal. These documents inspired a streamlined visual design that focused on connecting providers and educators while still being “artistic enough to appeal to a creative community”. With approved designs in hand, our development team set to the task of building the system.
IMPLEMENTATION
We devised a Drupal-based solution that empowers the team at AAI to create, edit, and manage important site data and content while engaging two distinctly different audiences. Easy-to-use tools allow users to share data, build profiles, and make connections based on common interests.
The Exchange helps educators:
- Locate qualified arts providers who provide programs that fit their targeted age group, subject matter requirements, budget, and schedule
- Assess best practices in school / provider collaborations
- Participate in relevant discussions centered around arts programming in Illinois schools
Arts Providers and Organizations can use the Exchange to:
- Search for RFPs (Project Requests) from Educators and educational institutions requiring services
- Market and arrange effective program partnerships with schools
- Generate and track data on the breadth, depth, and diversity of their school engagements
- Learn from other community members, borrow each others’ ideas, share resources, and highlight student accomplishments
- Assess the impacts of their marketing efforts
- Participate in relevant discussions centered around arts programming in Illinois schools
A robust search tool allows users to find various criteria on:
- Arts disciplines
- Grades served
- Program types
- Special needs
- Regions served
The Exchange also yields data for the statewide arts education community so they can:
- Map where providers are serving schools statewide and within geographic areas
- Track usage of most active users on the site
- Identify what content areas are the most visited over time
- Identify gaps and opportunities for increased school/arts provider collaborations
- Provide assessments of the arts providers that will help them to improve
- Showcase student successes
THE RETURN
Over one hundred arts providers signed up with the Arts and Education Exchange in the first week after launch, putting the exchange well on its way to meeting an annual goal of 250 providers. Users appreciate the ability to create profiles and add programs, audio files, video, and other elements. We are partnering with other organizations to bring new functionality to the exchange and help all the organizations involved reach a wider audience.
If you are an arts provider or Illinois-based educator, you can register and create a profile on the Arts and Education Exchange at the link above left.