Customer Spotlight: Heinemann Explore
Publisher overviewHeinemann is the UK's leading educational publisher, producing high quality teaching and learning materials for the pre-school to college years. Heinemann are part of the global education company Harcourt Education Ltd (a member of the Reed Elsevier Group plc), who provide a variety of books, print, and electronic learning materials, assessments, and professional development programs.
The Heinemann objective – A brief history of the project
In the year 2000 Heinemann approached Ingenta to build a custom educational research portal aimed at children from school years 3 to 9 covering a variety of subjects from the UK’s National Curriculum’s classification system of Key Stages 2 and 3. Based in Oxford, Heinemann’s offices were conveniently located near to Ingenta, aiding both companies in a working relationship.
Initial consultations involved the planning stages of the portal's user interface. Ingenta’s in-house information architecture team developed, in accordance with Heinemann’s concepts, a site structure that incorporated all necessary functionality whilst maintaining an intuitive interface suitable for a younger audience.
Once specifications for the site’s structure had been established, Ingenta’s development leaders liaised with Heinemann to choose a data format for supplying their content. The choice was XML.
Use of data supplied as XML has enabled the development of a rich dynamic website, in which use of complex templates has reduced the need for creating many static pages, providing Heinemann a great deal of control as to how their pages will render simply by varying their XML.
Scope of the project
The Heinemann Explore web site has grown considerably over time since it’s inception in January 2001, originally starting life with one subject offering, Key Stage 2 History. The site now offers umbrella access to 6 modules incorporating History, Science and Geography.
Access to the site is by subscription –- users purchase access on a module-by-module basis and are offered discounts when multiple modules are required. English primary and secondary schools can redeem their eLearning credits with Heinemann to obtain access. These credits are given to each school by the Department for Education and can be used to purchase any digital resources that form part of the Curriculum Online programme. (For more information please click here.)
Free trials to any of the subjects are available and can run in parallel with a user’s subscription, maintaining the umbrella feature.
Once a user (i.e. teacher) has subscribed, they benefit from the ability to set up additional user names and passwords for their pupils (or additional teachers). The modules also contain differentiated text so a teacher can specifically set up a pupil with access to a subscribed module at their current reading skill level.
Each module provides articles of interest as required for pupils by the English National Curriculum; these include general articles, biographies, written activities, literacy lessons, pictures, videos, flash animations and glossary banks. These are all encompassed by a full text search facility or users can search on keywords chosen by Heinemann to access relevant material. There are also supporting on line “test yourself” quiz’s (also at differentiated skill levels) which allow the users to test their knowledge.
Once a module has been created a flat CD version of the subject is produced as a side product for schools that either don’t benefit from a high-speed Internet connection or prefer the idea of a one off payment due to budgeting restraints.
Recent developments
Following the success of the current KS2 and KS3 modules, especially KS2, Heinemann are working towards a Key Stage 1 module aimed at school years 1 and 2 (ages 5 and 6), which will provide a whole range of subjects within the same subscription. Its release is subject to market research but a demonstration site for the purpose of gaining user feedback can be found in the visit primary section of the site.
Have a look online
The Heinemann Explore site can be found at www.heinemannexplore.com
A Flash walkthrough of the site is available by following the visit primary or secondary links on the index page. The free trial option provides users full access to their chosen module(s) for a period of 30 days.
Questions or suggestions for future customer Spotlight feature articles?
We’d like to answer your questions or tell you more about specific components of this project. Please email David Matthews if you would like to learn more, or suggest another Ingenta publishing customer to be featured in the Customer Spotlight.