We started our work on this project by researching the technologies that were used to disseminate knowledge throughout the history of correspondence education. Historically, correspondence education is a method of providing education to nonresident students, who have received lessons and exercises via mail, internet, radio and television throughout history.

We were also thinking about gaming methodologies and reward cycles in educational applications. We decided to attach a hundred dollar prize to each day's tabulated scholastic results, incentivizing attention with a monetary reward in an attention economy to see if short term ROI would play a role in participation.

To set the stage for our project, we created a film that set the historical context for our work. We’ve seen throughout history how technology has driven innovation and accessibility in educational pursuits. From the initiation of the correspondent schools in the 1850’s, where students could take university classes through the mail, to the advent of the internet and online education, these innovations have incentivized and created opportunities for more people to receive an education on their own time, from anywhere.

Each hour during “Class Time” (10-6pm EST) one “Lesson” video was published and the web app refreshed with a quiz that pertained to the content exhibited in the “Lesson” video.

School University took place during a 1-week long Instagram residency. Each hour we posted video lessons on Instagram and participants would have the remainder of that hour to answer the questions on a corresponding web app.

Students answered questions through the School University InstaSCAN™ interface after they reviewed the lesson content on Instagram. Once a question was answered they could not see the next question until the following hour.

At the end of the day “students” received a report card and their ranking. The students with the most correct answers and the most correct answer for the Bonus Question won $100.

We published a Statement of Purpose to wrap-up the School University project. The document outlines some of our thinking and motivations along with a plethora of links to material relating to the subject of education that we found interesting and helped inform our perspective for this work. The Statement of Purpose can be found here.

We promoted the ads on Instagram, the same platform the University would be set, to get the news out to potential students.