Year: 2020-2022
During my time at Stanford EPLI we decided that it was time to update the way our two print publications The Stanford PACS Guide to Effective Philanthropy, and The Stanford PACS Philanthropy Toolkit were living online.
At the time of this projects conception both publications were living as very static online learning modules on our WP site. We knew that to get more engagement with our content we needed to make it fun, and interactive.
The solution was to find an online learning management system that could support the interactivity we were hoping to have, as well as, other features like: course tracking, downloadable summaries, video, interactive quizzes etc.
As a team we understood the undertaking that was about to occur given we planned to do 90% of the project in house. For our small team of five delegating tasks, and setting deadlines was a first priority. It was also clear we needed to ask the right questions to make sure this project could succeed:
We reviewed what our competitors were offering in the realm of online learning for donors and advisors to better understand what else we could bring to the table. We also extensively reviewed competitive platforms, and services that offered Online Learning Management systems that provided enough interactivity, and autonomy for us to create our desired courses.
We decided to go with Learndash as their services provided a majority of the capabilities we were seeking in terms of course progression, video content, quizzes, forms, unique user profiles, and user feedback. Due to our small team, and limited time frame we instantly jumped in by building, and learned by trial and error. Once I had created an MVP of our online course we went through extensive feedback sessions revising and iterating on the content.
After finalizing the content we were able to put our product in front of members of our team and faculty, as well as, a few trusted advisors. From here we have flagged pain points, continuity issues, platform shortcomings, and more.
At this point in the project we have a completed Prototype, and are on our third round of user testing. We hope to get our Online courses in front of a group of close colleagues and trusted advisors to do a small launch, and feedback session of the product we have developed so far. When accessing this material please review it for internal purposes only.
