Hill Learning Center - Online Course Design

The Challenge

In 2015 Hill Learning Center, a Durham, North Carolina nonprofit supporting students who have learning differences and their teachers, worked with The Farthest Pixel to convert several workshops in their in-person HillRAP Program to offer a supplemental online delivery option. In 2020, when the COVID pandemic started, they immediately began to convert their remaining program courses to fully online delivery. However, they were concerned about the level of engagement learners would experience in their courses, and feared they may sacrifice the quality of the experience participants had in their face-to-face workshops. 

The Solution

We collaborated closely with Hill to determine the best way to enhance their existing eLearning with additional interactivity, while updating all of their courses with their new brand, and prioritizing key courses in their program to maximize their budget. For our first course project among these, we submitted a proposal for a Designing for Good grant and received $10,000 as one of 2020’s winners to work on an interactive for something they call Word Attack. The following spring and into 2022 we continued to support Hill Learning Center in designing and developing materials to enhance their online courses. Their Professional Development team took our online course, Designing for Teaching Online, in order to better support their own online course development work from within Hill Learning Center going forward.