UBC: Continuing Professional Development
About UBC CPD
The University of British Columbia is a global center for teaching, learning and research, consistently ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world. UBC embraces innovation and transforms ideas into action. Since 1915, UBC has been opening doors of opportunity for people with the curiosity, drive and vision to shape a better world. With over 70,000 students among their campuses, and with 375,000 alumni across the world it is a mainstay among Canadian higher education institutions.
UBC Continuing Professional Development (UBC CPD) is an academic unit within the Faculty of Medicine at the University, advancing the field of continuing professional development through the design, delivery, accreditation, evaluation, and research of lifelong learning opportunities for health professionals in British Columbia and beyond.
The website - https://ubccpd.ca/ - is built on Drupal 9, and with a multitude of programs and initiatives, the UBC CPD needed a web partner to assist with ongoing support, consultation, and development. While they had worked with prior agencies, they were specifically seeking help from a BC-based agency, hoping to maximize collaboration time that comes with working in the same time zone.
Among the services requested, UBC CPD was looking for a partner to occasionally consult and collaborate on their ongoing efforts to continually improve, enhance their Drupal website, and assist with questions of design, development, security, and SEO services.
To manage these tasks, they found the flexibility and freedom that Cheeky Monkey Media's WebOps programs have to offer. By purchasing a block of hours through the WebOps program, UBC CPD was able to spend hours in as large or small increments as necessary, all without having to commit to specific monthly thresholds, limits, or service restrictions. As with all WebOps packages, they were able to take advantage of all of CMM's available services including Project Management, Design, Development, Search Engine Optimization, and Digital Marketing.
WebOps Work
Collaborating with the UBC CPD team, Cheeky Monkey worked on releases that enhanced the front and back end functionality of their Drupal 9 website. The monkeys worked closely with UBC CPD to investigate bugs, provide solutions, and build feature enhancements. Through each release, priority level pieces were investigated and moved into a monthly maintenance cycle.
Work done to date includes
- Ongoing Drupal Core and Module security updates
- Enhancements to user experience and flow
- Bug Fixes
- Styling updates
- Strategic Planning for Drupal 10
- Module and Code Audit + Improvements
Currently, work continues as the monkeys help UBC CPD move their site from Drupal 9 and onto Drupal 10. While performing this upgrade is a fairly straightforward process, special consideration and care is being taken in order to ensure the consistency of complex integrations and custom code. Development has included the investigation of module upgrade paths, research on solutions for non-compatible upgrades, and extensive testing during each phase of work.