Schools, colleges and universities are complex beasts. The consequence of our vast structures and a great many roles that we play in the world is a system that tends to work in silos. Sadly, our websites, information management systems and content structures often follow those silos. But those structures rarely make sense to our users.

By switching our thinking and how we view our institutions and our content, we can effect exciting change in our digital communications. Instead of seeing our institution as the complex beast of many silos we lift the lens caused by organisational structures to see beautiful ecosystems of interconnected themes, challenges, and outputs.

Content modelling at an institutional level offers up a new framework for seeing how content and information themes connect across our institutions. Through this process we remove organisational and departmental structures and create a vision for information and content design that frees it from silos. In doing so, we can form meaningful and impactful connections between content that lays the foundations for a more connected approach to content management and distribution, and sets a course towards structured content and personalisation.

In this session we’ll take a look at how to approach content modelling, showing real examples from universities in the UK, and show how it helps to break down barriers and build better relationships not just between content, but also between colleagues.