A smartphone screen displays an Edutopia article titled “Leaders Must Address Teacher Well-Being With Action, Not Just Self-Care Talk.” The article includes an illustration of diverse hands supporting a teacher at a podium, and a visible comment count icon. A person wearing glasses is holding the phone.

Edutopia: What Works in Education

Founded in 1991, Edutopia has become a key resource for teachers, school administrators, education researchers, and parents working with students from pre-K to grade 12. As a publisher serving diverse audiences, Edutopia needed an infrastructure that could support their high volume of content production while ensuring it brought personalized, relevant content to each user.

INTRODUCTION

Edutopia was using an outdated tech stack that had become cumbersome. Using an older version of Drupal made publishing content time-consuming, making it difficult for them to develop new capabilities.

As they published upwards of five articles per day, the time commitment to upload to the site became unmanageable. They needed a system that supported their decoupled architecture and their need to publish a high volume of content. Edutopia and Trew Knowledge partnered to facilitate their migration from Drupal to WordPress. 

A tablet held by a person displays the Edutopia homepage. The featured article titled “How the Drive to Be Socially Connected Can Lead to School Improvement” is accompanied by an illustration of a person paddling a canoe toward a bright light through a wave tunnel. Below it are additional articles on classroom integration and school conflict.

Challenges

Creating a sustainable publishing ecosystem

Edutopia’s writers and editors had their hands tied by Drupal’s restrictive publishing format. They spent many hours inputting and adjusting copy and images to ensure each article fit brand guidelines before publishing. By migrating to WordPress and modernizing Edutopia’s tech stack, they’re now able to publish content faster using a WYSIWYG editor. Edutopia now has a faster, scalable site that provides an intuitive user experience for their editors. They save time and money as writers can now spend more time creating content versus uploading it to the website.

Desktop webpage of Edutopia featuring an article titled “How AI Will Impact the Future of Teaching—a Conversation With Sal Khan.” The banner includes an illustration of Sal Khan thinking, with educational icons, code, and AI-themed dialogue bubbles in the background.
UI interface for “Ask Edutopia AI,” showing three sample prompts: “Help me try this in my classroom,” “Tell me about the research behind embodied learning,” and “Create an editable PDF I can share with colleagues.” A disclaimer notes that responses are AI-generated and may contain errors.

Challenges

Removing roadblocks to further innovation

The team at Edutopia had a long list of customizations and features they wanted to create. But they were limited by Drupal’s capabilities and pace of production. While the Drupal site required multiple engineers to accomplish a build, they can now reallocate those resources to tackle the new ideas sitting on the backburner. Now, Edutopia can quickly and efficiently develop new features to ensure relevancy for their users through human-centered algorithms. 

Challenges

“Ask Edutopia”: A custom AI integration 

As a foundation on the forefront of education, Edutopia recognizes the need to continuously innovate to help serve their users. Because of this, the team wanted to leverage WordPress’s ability to develop new features to incorporate AI into the site. Trew Knowledge was tasked with developing an AI plugin to create a more interactive experience that amplified engagement. We built an AI block that allows editors to select three pre-populated prompts related to the article’s topic. These prompts appear at the end of the article in the “Ask Edutopia AI” panel and help further engagement on the article and improve the experience for readers.

A chat-style response from Edutopia AI to the prompt “Tell me about the research behind embodied learning.” The answer suggests teaching techniques such as thumbs up/down for understanding and using nonverbal cues. Below, there are thumbs-up/down icons for feedback, a text box, and email field.
A laptop displays an Edutopia article titled “5 Essential Tech Talks to Have With Students,” illustrated with a classroom raft scene navigating a digital flood. On the right, a visible comment section shows reader input and engagement.

The Results

Edutopia was awarded the 2024 Web Excellence Award in the Education Category. Edutopia was awarded Silver at the 2024 w3 Award in the Education Category.

10k+

Content pieces migrated from Drupal to WordPress

80%+

Reduction in content layout speed

0 mins

Downtime since migration

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