Content structure complexities
The educational content is delivered by a multi-source system that supports all K-12 digital products within McGraw Hill's ecosystem. Structurally, the content hierarchy follows a generalized model of grandparent → parent → child → grandchild, where each level may contain multiple pieces of content—or serve as an “empty container” purely for organizational purposes. In practice, this means a teacher might click into a chapter and not encounter any actionable content until drilling down into a specific lesson. Once there, they may face multiple layers of collapsible content accordions, each requiring additional interaction. This structure led us to deeply consider the teacher's experience at every step—and to ask what they truly need in each individual moment to support instruction effectively.
Each product serves as a grandparent-level structure that can contain multiple top-level sections—like units or chapters—with content tied directly to them, while also nesting second-level sections, such as lessons and individual instructional components, each equally capable of housing their own content
A similar way to think about it, each layer can contain meaningful content or simply act as a wrapper, requiring educators to progressively unpack each level to reach the instructional materials they need
