Educational Content Creation

People are curious by nature and for the first time in human history we have the ability to share educational materials easily and on a mass scale. While not every product has an educational component, finding ways your brand can bring value and help people better themselves is key. I’ve had the opportunity at MetroWall and Bantam Tools to develop credited and non-credited courses to help potential and current clients learn more about our products.

AIA-Credited Education Courses

MetroWall has served architects and designers since 2007. One of the many services the company offers is Continued Education Courses (CEU) through AIA. Every year architects need to acquire a certain number of CEU credits to retain their license. By going through AIA they also get an additional certification. When I came to MetroWall, we only had one CEU course offering. Since joining the team in 2023, I’ve created three new courses and updated the existing course.

  1. Determine the Topic: I always want an educational course to provide value for our customers, so I often build courses around topics from questions our sales team is frequently getting about glass wall interiors. Another place I will look to is our annual customer survey and end-of-course feedback survey.

  2. Deep Research: Once a topic has been determined, it’s time to conduct research using Google, reputable industry outlets, and fellow thought leaders.

  3. Draft and Outline Course: Before I start building materials, I like to consolidate my research into an outline to nail down the story and framework for the course deck. I will then share this outline with the sales team and bring them together for a workshop to get their input.

  4. Build Course Materials: From here, I move into the building phase. For these types of courses, we create course overviews, certificates, and presentation decks.

  5. Renew: Each course needs to be renewed every three years. I’m responsible for renewing and updating these courses.

Bantam Tools CNC Courses

One of the primary audiences we targeted at Bantam Tools was “skill builders.” These customers were teachers, students, or people looking to level up their machining knowledge. But one of the main pain points for this group—especially teachers—was having the time to build a curriculum around our desktop CNC machines and our machine-control software. As a result, I was tasked with building educational courses for our Desktop CNC Milling Machine. I developed the “Bantam Tools Desktop CNC Getting Started Course” and the “Bantam Tools Desktop CNC 4th Axis Course.”

  1. Analyze Customer Feedback: The starting point for these courses was to assess common support questions our customers were having. We also gathered feedback from our remote residents and educators who had been using our machines for 2+ years.

  2. Understand Product: Before you can teach someone a skill, you need to have thorough knowledge of it. This pushed me to not only learn to use our products, accessories, and software in theory, but in reality. Having this hands on kowledge and skill gave me an additional perspective when creating the building blocks for each course.

  3. Develop Course Materials: The goal was to have the course be a mix of reading, videos, and projects. Many of our modules were based on technical guides I had written, but then the course took this a step further by connecting the dots via videos and projects. The goal at the end of each course was to have a user complete a project that they felt proud of and give them confidence to step out on their own.

  4. Scriptwriting and Video Presentations: Each course contained several videos. I created scripts for each of these videos to ensure my fellow presenters and I covered the most required talking points. While I have done public speaking before, doing a recorded training video like this was new to me. The experience was as challenging as it was gratifying. The videos gave us the ability to make the courses more personable and add another layer to them.

  5. Set Up Online Course: Once all the materials were created, I needed to set up the course in an educational platform. I then worked with my Head of Software to ensure that it was connected to our e-commerce store and that all data was piping into our inventory correctly.