USC reinvigorates staff learning program with an ‘expedition’ theme

The learning resources available to staff at the University of Southern California (USC), branded TrojanLearn, were many. Too many, in fact. Overwhelmed by the volume of material, employees’ use of the library of materials was minimal. Solving this problem has earned USC first place in the “Employee Education Program” category of Ragan’s 2017 Employee Communications Awards.

The solution was to curate a carefully selected bundle of the best resources on a given topic in a variety of formats, including 10-minute interactive introductions, hour-long interactive courses, topic-related videos and blogs, materials written by thought leaders and content produced on the topic. 

Rather than make all materials from all topics available at once, the team introduced content on a month-by-month basis under the rebranded identity of the Trojan Knowledge Expedition. To introduce employees to the newly reconfigured resource, communicators ran with the expedition theme, employing a retro space exploration look and feel for the campaign that was designed to get employees to check out the materials even if they had tried TrojanLearn before and abandoned it. 

A video teased the program two months before it launched, articulating in one line what was coming. The same look and feel carried over into other marketing materials. The program’s graphics appeared on the intranet, Employee Gateway, as well as in emails and on social media channels. 

The effort paid off, with a 20 percent increase in access to materials—not including those employees were required to view to comply with various regulations. 

For redesigning the learning library and marketing it effectively, congratulations to the team of Dave Davis, Saeyoung Vu, Diane Schrader, Candace Stalder, Jandy Hardesty and Sonia Mentz.