workshop is a set of application capabilities that provides space for hands-on, experiential learning in small working groups.
Working in for-profit higher education publishing for over a decade has provided me with the opportunity to work with and network with dozens of authors and hundreds of customers including instructors, students, and professional associations. An emerging theme in online higher education learning is the importance of employability and how technology can offer authentic experiences for students working in groups.
Starting with an environmental scan of higher education institutions in Ontario that use an LMS and identify group work with peer assessment either as an interest or a top priority, I was able to identify key features and limitations of the collaboration tools in use.
While industry associations, corporations, and academic institutions work and network to find equivalencies for the types of hands-on, face-to-face, co-created, peer assessed, and industry validated projects that are common in work-integrated learning programs, workshop simplifies the process by enabling an all-in-one solution to create groups, track project milestones, includes a complete workspace, and integrates with existing LMS capabilities like class roster, virtual meeting rooms, and analytics dashboards.
Please see my workshop in progress.
Feedback: Workshop seems like an interesting hybrid between a project management system and an LMS. This could potentially be the solution for the scores of adult learners who are unable to participate in placements, coops or on-site learning. It was hard to differentiate your elevator pitch from your venture pitch. I would consider renaming your landing page from home to something like ‘elevator pitch’.
Thanks, Julio,
Your remarks are more helpful than I might have liked (but that’s positive), because they indicate that I did not simply and clearly convey that workshop is a small and yet complete application that can stand alone or be easily integrated into an LMS and either use it’s standalone features OR the existing tools in place in the LMS. I should have clearly explained what shared capabilities are and their importance for reduced development costs and ease of end-user set up. Looking back on it, I think I took for granted my day-to-day work experience and jargon and should have been more mindful that I could be joining a video call (walking into a room) where no prior knowledge should be taken for granted.
Thanks again.
Hi Ben,
The link for your workshop takes me to a page that says doesn’t exist. However, I clicked on the menu at the top and that led me to the pitch.
I liked that the Venture had a good outline and made things easy to see. You showcased the problem and gave a strong compelling solution while also looking at the competition.
A couple of things jumped out at me. The pitch page, you have a set of statements next to the image. I am not sure if it was deliberate, but they don’t have a capital or a period. I just found this to be a bit odd. Also, I see that you wrote “workshop” in bold throughout your site…again, not sure if this was deliberate, but I feel since this is a company, it might be nice to have it starting with a capital.
I definitely like your “experiential Learning”. It looked really professional. Also, you went through the “competition” page really well, with both pros and cons. I felt this was very powerfully done.
Overall nicely done.
Hi Sundeep,
Thanks for your review and thanks especially for pointing out the link error. Easily fixed, but I wouldn’t have noticed without your remark.
I’m glad that you spotted the oddity of lowercase and boldface. It was definitely deliberate and intended to draw attention, though not intended to be annoying. I don’t work in my office marketing department, but it was an attempt at branding in a way that would make it stand out. The idea is that it’s not an overwhelming product, but a partner product that is very helpful and not too shouty about that fact.
Best,
Ben
Hi Ben,
This looks very professionally done and it is obvious you put a lot of thoughts into it. I like the different graphics you have throughout your pitch as they provide a quick and clear idea of what you’re hoping to convey.
In some ways, I feel there is room for collaboration between your and my venture ideas as we both are looking into the component of networking.
I also echoed Sundeep’s feedback that the page on the analysis of market competitors was nicely done.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Rachel,
Consistency is so important, and the mechanics of networking even more so. Graphics are one thing, but in many ways this was underdone somewhat by design and somewhat due to lack of experience. I do have to submit and review requests for proposals at work and the budgets are often large, but branding and images and pitches in a popular format are usually someone else’s job. I’ve never had to pitch to anyone outside of my company, and I think this practice in this MET course reveals quite a lot about idea generation and how we learn, teach, and influence in our day jobs.
Best,
Ben
Hi Ben,
The content is very well researched and well thought out. I may suggest you change the format of some of your text to highlight key points (e.g. bullets). I also suggest you add more video and visual storytelling to your site. It was very interesting to learn about the market opportunity and you clearly stated who your target audience was (students enrolled in qualitative and quantitative business courses encounter about 20-30% of their course grade dedicated to team-based work). I understand then you will not be targeting any non-enrolling students? I wonder what you think about offering badges and opening up workshop to a broader interested in gaining work experience skills? Would they need to be enrolling students in order to make valid contributions to the professional networks they are connected to through workshop? I’m curious to learn more about your target market.