Thorn Learning developed and delivered the British Council’s first large-scale user-generated content (UGC) campaign for TeachingEnglish, helping teachers worldwide share authentic professional learning experiences, classroom insights and teaching ideas through short-form video content.
Project overview
TeachingEnglish brings together a global community of English language teachers through its website, courses, webinars and social media channels. Thorn Learning was commissioned to create a structured process for sourcing, evaluating, producing and publishing user-generated video content from community members worldwide.
The project aimed to strengthen authenticity and trust by showcasing real teachers, real classrooms and real professional learning experiences. Through a global call for submissions, teachers were invited to share how they had benefited from TeachingEnglish resources, courses, events and communities, or to contribute practical teaching tips and advice for fellow educators.
The resulting campaign produced a diverse collection of video testimonials and teaching tips which were shared across TeachingEnglish social media channels as YouTube Shorts, Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels.
How we worked with the client
Chris Thorn worked closely with the TeachingEnglish Open Learning and Communities of Practice teams to design the project framework, produce promotional materials, manage submissions and develop final video assets.
The project involved:
- Developing submission guidelines and selection criteria.
- Designing call-out campaigns and promotional materials.
- Creating submission and consent processes.
- Reviewing and quality assuring community submissions.
- Editing and producing short-form video content.
- Creating branded video templates and motion graphics.
- Producing subtitles, transcripts and accessibility assets.
- Developing SEO titles, descriptions and metadata.
- Maintaining video inventories and production records.
- Supporting evaluation and future planning.
Submissions were evaluated against criteria including relevance, clarity, technical quality, copyright compliance, safeguarding considerations and suitability for publication across TeachingEnglish channels. Successful contributors received certificates recognising their participation.
Services and standards
Campaign design, community engagement, video production, motion graphics, accessibility compliance, content moderation, quality assurance, SEO optimisation, metadata management and educational content development.
Compliance to accessibility standards for digital resources, including transcripts, subtitles, closed captions and mobile-first design considerations.
Maintaining the British Council approach to EDI through contributor selection processes designed to ensure representation across regions, nationalities, educational contexts and teaching experiences.
Main outputs
- User-generated content strategy and contributor selection framework.
- Submission guidelines, evaluation checklists and quality assurance processes.
- Promotional campaign assets and participation call-outs.
- 38 published user-generated videos produced from 72 submissions received from teachers across 30 countries.
- Course testimonial videos highlighting the impact of TeachingEnglish professional development courses.
- Teacher-generated teaching tips, classroom strategies and professional practice insights.
- SEO-optimised titles, descriptions, transcripts and subtitle files for all published videos.
- Editable project files and final video assets.
Topics covered
- Classroom activities to develop language skills.
- Teaching speaking.
- Reflective practice.
- AI in education.
- Sustainability.
- Digital learning technologies.
- Language learning projects.
- Gender equality.
- Climate education.
- Storytelling.
- Multilingual teaching approaches.
Learn more
Explore the TeachingEnglish ‘Share your story’ playlist on YouTube.
Learn about the community call-out initiative.
Team and contributors
- Project design, contributor support, video production and evaluation: Chris Thorn
- Project management and content strategy: British Council TeachingEnglish Open Learning and Communities of Practice teams
- Video contributors: 38 TeachingEnglish community members representing 30 countries worldwide.
