Designing a Digital Home for a Community of Practice: Inside the Build of the K12 Using Postsecondary Data Website
Building fully customized websites isn’t always the easiest task — but when QIP built a website for the K12 Community of Practice: Using Postsecondary Data (K12 CoP), our team was more than up to the challenge. The K12 CoP needed a website to support a freely accessible, community-driven collective of K12 and postsecondary data users, collectors, managers, and analysts. These professionals—working at the state and district level—come together to share challenges, solutions, and exchange resources that strengthen pathways for students moving from high school to college or the workforce.
QIP built k12usingpsdata.com on WordPress with a custom theme engineered to meet Section 508 and WCAG 2.2 AA requirements. Meeting these requirements meant ensuring a variety of accessible features including skip links, which allow screen readers to bypass repetitive information such as navigation menus, semantic landmarks for easy navigation, and keyboard-accessible navigation features such as logical tab order and higher focus states. Other considerations and implementations high-contrast and color-contrast rules across templates. We also validated patterns such as headings or lists with automated checks and manual keyboard testing to ensure screen reader compatibility and smooth navigation for users of all abilities.
Because the K12 CoP was part of an existing project completed by QIP, the design team drew from that foundation work to ensure brand recognition. The color palette—burgundy, slate blue, and teal—was tuned for contrast ratios in headings and key components, balancing vibrancy and readability. Burgundy was retained to echo the original Gates Foundation grant branding, helping the site feel both new and familiar to returning stakeholders. Together, the colors create a balanced visual experience that guides the user’s attention without overwhelming the content.
Since community-driven discussion is at the heart of this CoP, the site centers on an interactive forum where participants can share data challenges, emerging practices, and questions. Technically, the forum supports secure user registration and role-based permissions, threaded conversations, @mentions, per-topic subscriptions with email notifications, and file attachments to support code snippets, templates, and resource sharing.
Moderation tools such as pre-approval queues, spam mitigation, and flagging workflows keep conversations constructive and safe. Gamification also encourages participation through points, badges, and ranks tied to actions such as starting a topic, replying, or sharing resources. Visitors can access the forum directly from the home page, which invites users to “Join the K12 CoP Forum.”
QIP designed and organized site content so that users can quickly find and understand the information they need. Page layouts follow familiar F- and Z-reading patterns with scannable headings, short paragraphs, and card-based blocks so users can quickly decide where to dive deeper.
A core feature of the site is the searchable, filterable resource library, designed to help practitioners quickly locate best practices for using postsecondary outcomes data. The library includes free, downloadable resources, with options for users to submit or suggest new items for review—this approach keeps the collection fresh while preserving editorial quality.
Whether a user is looking for a new resource, trying to connect with peers, or exploring how others are using postsecondary data to support student success, the site helps them get there faster.
k12usingpsdata.com is intended to be more than just a website—it’s an infrastructure for shared knowledge and collective progress. As the community grows, this platform will continue to support the exchange of ideas that improve educational outcomes for students across the country.
