Just a few months ago, One Day University was filling auditoriums around the country with people who love to learn. When the pandemic caused a shut down of all large gatherings, the company pivoted in order to deliver the same quality content to their audience, now from the comfort and safety of their home.
One Day University is best known for finding the most dynamic professors from dozens of schools to teach about a variety of topics – from Abraham Lincoln to Zoology and everything in-between. In just weeks, the One Day U team built a 10,000+ online community, where people enthusiastically fill their time watching and learning from the world-class professors they were planning to see in person.
Following their successful pivot, staring on June 1st, One Day University this week began adding premium classes. These give their members access to exclusive content and smaller class sizes, with the ability have their questions answered in either “Zoom Room One” or “Zoom Room Two.”
Some of the first premium classes will include:
- Space Talk: What’s Happening Out There in the Rest of the Universe
(David Helfand / Columbia University) - The Science of Pleasure: What we like, and what we don’t (and why)
(Paul Bloom / Yale University)
- What we Know About The Brain
(Heather Berlin / Mount Sinai Medical School) - Presidential Leadership: From FDR through Today
(Jeffrey Engel / SMU) - Abraham Lincoln: Fact vs Fiction
(Louis Masur / Rutgers)
The premium service model is similar to Spotify, where you pay extra to remove distractions, such as advertisements. One Day University does not have ads in their programming, but with the growing popularity of their new online classes, access to getting questions answered and having discussions is limited as thousands of “students” are watching.
“We get a lot of feedback from our members and what really stood out was the desire for smaller group discussions. With the addition of the premium presentations, we will deliver innovative ways for people to learn and actively engage with our experts,” said One Day University Director Steven Schragis.
Their model also resembles that of Business Insider where premium members pay a bit more, but have access to more detailed information. Premium topics are ones that may provoke and call for a deeper understanding and further discussion. One Day University plans to limit the amount of people to 25 per premium class offered.
“Professors will lead these classes just like they would an upper lever seminar at their universities” Schragis said.
The exclusivity that the premium service offers is a rare find, as the professors that have been chosen to lead these courses are in high demand. When they teach at their colleges and universities, students from all over the world hope to spend a little bit of time with them to learn from them. Schragis notes, “We offer our members something that many spend thousands of dollars and years of their life to do – go to college!”
Over the years, as the company grew since its 2007 founding, newspapers began to take notice and eventually began to partner with One Day University. Papers such as the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal have worked with One Day University to get the word out to their readers about local events. Those partnerships and many others continue to work well as readers are looking for intellectually stimulating and fun ways to pass time at home.
One Day University will begin with 2-3 premium courses every week, in addition to their five regular classes. The list of options is truly outstanding – please find more information here! www.OneDayU.com