Dive: Student Aid
The Ryerson Leadership Lab is a policy and civic engagement thinktank based out of Ryerson University in Toronto. They were looking for a way to leverage the 2016 transformative story of how the Ontario government made post-secondary education ‘free’—a useful case study for policy students.
We teamed up with the Ryerson Leadership Lab to bring this story to life, but we wanted to take it beyond the traditional text-based or eLearning formats. Looking at the current ways in which people (especially young people) consume media and information today, we wanted not only to tell this policy story, but to enhance student engagement and push the boundaries of digital learning.
We brought together a multidisciplinary team of documentary media makers, policy experts and technology professionals to design, develop and test a completely new model for case-based learning. We combined a 12-episode documentary series with interactive learning elements for viewers to watch and explore, either at their leisure or as part of a structured course. The policy narrative is driven by the personal stories of political leaders, policy experts, students and critics, infusing the case study with the kinds of storytelling normally reserved only for film and television.
We designed interactive visual cues that prompt viewers to ‘dive’ deeper into topics by watching extended interviews or exploring additional resources. All media is housed on our custom-built web platform, Dive, which makes it accessible for in-class or personalized learning—for both students and the general public. Dive: Student Aid was officially launched in October 2020 and was featured on TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin.
