The Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC) is a collaborative project by Beyond Benign and the American Chemical Society (ACS) Green Chemistry Institute bringing educators from around the world together to share knowledge and best practices to help advance the integration of green chemistry across the education continuum. The GCTLC’s mission is to foster a sense of belonging and support collaboration and resource sharing among members of the scientific community advancing sustainable chemistry principles and practices.

Bringing together educators, students, and lifelong learners with a shared interest in reducing pollution, addressing hazards, improving safety and promoting sustainability within science education can be challenging, but aiming to do so as part of a global initiative requires creative thinking while maintaining a sense of familiarity to users. Social media platforms can put people in touch with others from around the world, but they aren’t well suited for undertaking collaborative projects or in-depth discussions of ideas and principles.

The GCTLC platform aims to address just that. Launched in October 2023, the platform includes user-created forums on topics including age-specific chemistry education, greener labs and experiments for students, sustainable green chemistry topics, upcoming events, and general teaching practices. The site also includes an open-access library of curriculum resources where users can submit content such as green chemistry lesson plans, age-appropriate classroom experiments, and published research in sustainable chemistry practices.

Importantly, what it needed was a more robust way for users to connect and call people in to directly share ideas, challenges, and solutions. The challenge this presented was how to create something familiar to users and easy to use.

Skvare’s team of expert developers and site builders worked with the GCTLC team to identify Drupal modules and customizations needed to create a familiar and easy-to-use method for tagging other users in forums. Skvare leveraged Groups, Comment Notify, and CKEditor Mentions, allowing users to tag each other using the '@' symbol followed by the desired username. When used in conjunction with the notify module, these mentions generate notifications for mentioned users via email or on a custom-built user dashboard.

Skvare configured and customized six group types for GCTLC which allows users to create groups on specific topics. These groups can be open to the public, open to any site user, by invitation only, or completely private and hidden from all but members of the group. Combining these groups with a set of custom forums outside the normal Drupal Forums allows users to interact in public forums or in forums within each group. Combined with the ability to tag other users in a forum within a group provides flexibility while also allowing for open and direct communications.

By enhancing forums, groups, and user mentions in comments, Skvare helped GCTLC create a more interactive, user-friendly platform. These improvements foster a stronger sense of community, empowering educators and scientists to collaborate effectively in advancing green chemistry education worldwide.