Dive: Student Aid

Overview

Dive: Student Aid is an interactive public affairs case study, created in 2019 to push the boundaries of digital learning in two ways. First, it combines academic rigour with visual and narrative quality that is normally reserved for television and cinema. Second, it integrates the content in a user-friendly interactive platform to make learning a personalized experience.

Dive: Student Aid tells the story of how the Ontario government transformed student financial aid to make post-secondary education free for many students in Canada’s largest province, and what happened next. It lets key political leaders, policymakers, journalists, students, and critics explain the why, what and how of this policy transformation story, allowing the user to assess the impact of the reforms and the legacy of political change.

The case study is presented as an interactive documentary experience. The interactivity is created by visual cues throughout the documentary that prompt the viewer to engage with more in-depth information, such as extended interviews with key characters, or relevant texts that speak about the topics raised at key points in the narrative. The platform also includes additional resources in various formats to supplement the documentary video, and self-assessment tools that users can choose to use as they progress through the case study.

We believe that fusing these elements together can achieve a dual purpose: to improve the engagement of learners with online tools and contribute to a more informed and engaged civil society.