Tanner Higgin, Ph.D.
Back to work

Wide Open School

Organization
Common Sense Media
Role
Content strategy, learning design, editorial leadership
Period
2020–2021
Wide Open School’s Daily Plan, with grade-level filters, curated activities in math, reading, and emotional well-being, and a screen-break activity.
The Daily Plan experience with curated activities across grades and subjects, with time for screen breaks. Click to view.

Learning at home, almost overnight

When the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools in March 2020, there was an immediate, overwhelming need for quality distance learning resources that kept learning going at home. Common Sense partnered with Amplify on a project to build a website that would share learning activities and guidance for families, educators, and students navigating this challenge. It was conceptualized and launched in under three weeks.

I was selected to lead the content and learning design team powering the platform: Wide Open School.

Building the content foundation

This was an extraordinary 0-to-1 project that required speed, precision, and a lot of prioritization. I led a cross-functional team, in close partnership with the product manager, of around a dozen staff members spanning content, project management, design, and business development. I had to juggle learning design, content strategy, partnership relations, and editorial operations simultaneously.

Along the way, I built the entire content design and operations foundation from the ground up: I set the learning goals, created the content’s tone and voice, and established the standards and processes that allowed us to move quickly. While we curated content from dozens of trusted partners, my team vetted, rewrote, and reframed every single piece to fit the needs of families suddenly schooling from home.

Reach and impact

The site was a huge success, quickly garnering a large, dedicated audience and the support of 19 different funders. In the first three months alone, my team published close to 2,000 learning activities. Our work culminated in a major partnership with NYC Schools—the nation’s largest district—to build a custom version of Wide Open School for their entire community.

When all was said and done, we forged 30 partnerships with household-name organizations like Google, Apple, PBS, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, National Geographic, and Comcast. We also reached around 2.5 million people, the majority of whom lived in or served low-income households.

Selected press