As a programme leader at High Resolves, Tas Fitzer has stewardship of a quality education programme with considerable rungs on the board in terms of longevity in the soft skills education space. 

Characterised by immersive workshops — traditionally delivered face-to-face in secondary and higher education settings as professional development and student-led projects — High Resolves delivers citizenship education experiences to help students develop critical life skills around social responsibility, empathy, identity and resilience. 

High Resolves programmes allow educators to guide students in independent thinking, collaboration and problem solving. They aim to empower young people to develop social justice and global citizenship skills while helping them find a place in the world.

The mission of High Resolves caught the eye of Veronica Wong at the University of Technology Sydney and their extra-curricular global leadership programme UTS Build. Their own objectives of creating global leaders and active global citizens are complemented by the goals of High Resolves. In the latter part of 2019, High Resolves partnered with UTS Build.

‘We found the content of High Resolves engaging and exciting, and a perfect fit for the objectives of our programme. Interactivity and engagement are really important to us,’ says Veronica Wong.

In an almost parallel backstory, Co-Founder and CEO Mehrdad Baghi had started a search for the best platform to take High Resolves digital.

Baghi’s criteria for the perfect platform to house High Resolves included one that accommodated High Resolves’ energetic, interactive and participatory learning. Baghi’s search eventually led High Resolves into a partnership with OpenLearning.

The online environment needed to deliver the high level of interactivity possible in the previous face-to-face learning context of High Resolves and critical to the UTS Build programme.

Drawing on their partnership with OpenLearning, High Resolves worked hard and fast to appropriate 100% of their material onto OpenLearning’s learning platform. 

In the mix, Merdahd made a reassuring recall to an earlier comment from OpenLearning’s Adam Brimo:

‘To borrow Adam’s description of OpenLearning: our work at High Resolves is not about students interacting with content. It’s about students interacting with students about the content. It’s not a ‘Lecture Plus a Quiz’ at the end format,’ says Baghi. ‘High Resolves students engage in conversation with each other, and in doing so learn from each other’, he adds.  

So, the challenge faced by High Resolves was the transition and translation of their highly interactive workshops into the online space while retaining the essence of their programmes, and delivering those programmes with impact. 

After the first COVID led disruption in 2020 to face to face learning, and subsequently prompted by a feeling that face-to-face may continue to be impacted, in January 2021 High Resolves made a strategic decision to continue the partnership with OpenLearning. 

By May of that year they had moved the majority of its content onto the OpenLearning platform.  

With the shift of High Resolves content online, Baghi declared that ‘If we hit 60% of all targets with what we hit when face-to-face, I’d be happy.’

OpenLearning’s Head of Learning Orna Ni Ghralaigh and the rest of the team worked in close partnership with UTS and High Resolves to co-design and pilot a programme in a three-way collaborative partnership that would effectively replicate the face-to-face efficacy of High Resolves in an online setting.   

Functionality and delivery design were the key elements at play in the resulting programme. These elements enabled the delivery of the critical level of interactivity between students and engagement with content that High Resolves and UTS were particularly keen to retain. 

Online, the synchronous and asynchronous learning allowed students to work through at their own pace with opportunities provided for student collaboration, discussion and reflection. 

Of particular note was the enhanced interactivity afforded by OpenLearning’s functionality in the ‘Identity’ topic which guides students to ‘find their people’ involving the use of its random selector or ‘Spinner’.  

An additional OpenLearning functionality that enhances student interactivity is the course feedback section. This allows the students to interact with the content by viewing, engaging and replying to other comments. The interchange of comments and conversation creates a strong learning community which is exactly what High Resolves and the UTS Build team were aiming for.

‘Students can come together as a wider group and share further,’ Veronica explains.

Underscoring the numerous positive outcomes that were and continue to be achieved in this partnership between High Resolves, UTS Build and OpenLearning, was a high degree of collaboration evidenced by the flexibility and constant conversations between all parties. 

For UTS Build, Veronica noted that from the point of view of institutional administrators the OpenLearning platform is easy to navigate. 

‘We have been able to track student progress and message them if necessary,’ she said. 

The list of positive outcomes emerging from this three way partnership shows the incredible power of reimagining the traditional learning model. Performance scores are higher on every metric using the online delivery model than was in face-to-face. 

For example: 

1. Engagement of those who were not as previously active 
2. Increased inclusivity of student voice 
3. Amplified opportunities for collaboration, discussion and reflection 
4. The high NPS scores for UTS are a further measure of success   

In addition, High Resolves was awarded Winner in the 2021 LearnX Awards for ‘Best Pandemic Response in Soft Skills Training’.  

The partnership between High Resolves, UTS Build and OpenLearning is a great example of how education and EdTech partnerships can drive real learning outcomes for students. In this case, EdTech can support the transition, translation and transformation of quality learning content from the face-to-face model into an online learning platform.   

This case study was first presented at the EduGrowth and ASCILITE Higher Ed EdTech Showcase Event in 2022 and observes the partnership between OpenLearning, High Resolves and UTS Build.