Plato University
Creative Strategy | Content Creation | Learning Experience Design | Digital Marketing
Project Overview
Company Context
Plato University is a 501(c)(3) non-profit on a mission to provide free education for the betterment of humanity. At Plato University students declare missions, rather than majors, learning skills not taught at traditional universities in order to solve global challenges.
Plato University was a passion project of mine, born of the belief that education underlies all other complex problems in our society. If we solve the problems in the education system, we can prepare students with the skills they need to solve all other global challenges. When an individual learns to solve problems important and close to them, their capacity for problem solving increases beyond their own life, possibly to global levels. At the same time, the undertaking of responsibility beyond the self cultivates a sense of purpose. Education of each individual becomes the primary intervention in addressing the crises of our time.
Role + Responsibilities
I serve Plato University as Founder and Learning Experience Designer, leading strategy, business development, and content production for the courses.
I developed the learning experience and marketing strategy for multiple courses focused on global challenges such as climate change, and tangible skills such as how to start a podcast. On some courses, I worked closely with subject matter experts and scholarly resources. I was responsible for content production of all course assets including video, audio, web design and CMS, and additional resources.
Since Plato was a non-profit organization with limited resources, organic marketing was critical for its growth. I developed a content marketing strategy that leveraged course content to market on multiple platforms and inviting students to sign up on Plato’s learning platform.
Content Strategy
Goal
As a startup, the goal was to attract a user base to show proof of concept to potential funders and have a list to launch a future bachelor's degree offering to in future.
Content Design
Every course was broken down into easy to consume daily micro lessons, typically 20 minutes or less, with an activity that would help students on the path to completing a larger project. For example, in the how to start a podcast course, one micro lesson may have a student create coverart for their podcast, which is one small step to fully launching a podcast.
Outlines and strategies for each course with a pedagogical approach.
Production of course content including interview SMEs, audio, video, worksheets, resources, and activities.
Custom designed learning management system and user experience using Webflow.
Marketing
These micro lessons served two purposes. From a pedagogical point of view, these lessons created a daily habit of learning and presented micro goals, which keeps motivation high for finishing the course. It also works on the principle of mastery based learning, where students master this small part before moving on to the next.
From a marketing perspective, each lesson became another piece of content to promote Plato University’s learning platform, inviting students to sign up for free in exchange for extra resources and a learning community. Because the lessons were short, they were bingeable and repeatedly invited students to join.
Craft headlines + copy to be optimized for engagement and SEO on all platforms
Create visual content as needed to support marketing efforts
Measure, analyze and report on content for each course
Distribution
All lessons for each course were then distributed as podcasts and YouTube videos, allowing students to take the entire course wherever they wanted. This challenges the traditional university or course creator approach where information is gatekept. Instead, we allowed students to fully see what Plato University offered before asking them to sign up on our platform.
Maintain content and publishing calendar
Optimize formatting for each platform
Results
Designed and developed content for six courses, including video and audio, leading to over 500,000 audio format downloads.
Designed and developed a website, content management system, and learning platform, attracting over 1,300 students.