The School of the New York Times offers educational programs for pre-college and professional audiences ranging from summer courses to online courses that explore important issues in media, business politics, arts, culture, technology and other real-world subject matter. All of the courses are designed to help students develop the skills and competencies that will guide their educational and professional paths.

The Challenge

Create a 6 week online course for grades 9 through 12 about the art of narrative essay writing. The product must be fully asynchronous with students completing course content 100% on their own.

The first goal of this course is to improve student essay writing skills by giving them a better sense of the essay writing process.

The second goal is take some of the stress and anxiety out of writing. In this course we acknowledge that at some point it’s natural to feel some frustration, and provide students with tools to get through it.

The Learner

Designed for students with an average reading level between grades 9 to 12. While global audiences will likely have access to this content it is generally intended from U.S. public school systems.

During course development we had the opportunity to test out the instructional design with high school students on campus while they were attending in-person writing programs with The School of the New York Times.

The Solution

The project team included: An instructional designer (C.A. Long, MFA), a mutlimedia designer and a subject matter expert.

Together with the subject matter expert, we produced a scripted series of lecture videos about the art of essay writing. In between these lecture sessions we interviewed NYT journalists to share their insight on the practice of writing and offered timed writing assignments. It was important for the course experience to be rich in quality media, animations and graphics.

We produced a companion workbook featuring writing exercises to help students stay engaged with course content. The workbook featured QR codes to fun clips and games to break up the self directed study.

The Results

The course was well received by students surveyed and continues to be shared as a resource to specific public schools in need. For learning retention results, please send us a note.