Audience: Tenth-grade students in an introductory philosophy course
Tools: Articulate Rise, CapCut, ChatGPT, Claude, embedded Storyline interactions
Goals and objectives
I created this course to introduce foundational philosophical ideas that students could revisit and build on throughout the school year. Plato’s allegory provides an accessible starting point for examining perception, knowledge, assumptions, and the difficulty of reconsidering familiar beliefs.
The learning objectives were to help students interpret the allegory, explain its central message, and apply its ideas to modern representations of reality.
My role
I wrote the scripts with support from ChatGPT, created and edited the videos in CapCut, and built the complete course in Articulate Rise. I directed the instructional sequence, visual treatment, and assessment design, reviewing and refining AI-assisted drafts throughout development.
Branding, storyboarding, and prototyping
I chose a cave-inspired palette of charcoal, slate, muted gray, and warm amber to establish a thoughtful atmosphere. The visual theme connected the learning experience to the allegory while supporting a consistent presentation.
Planning focused on the progression from an engaging “What is real?” hook to understanding the allegory and examining modern shadows. As the course developed, I simplified crowded or repetitive sections and clarified the purpose of each activity. The video introduced the narrative, allowing the surrounding material to focus on interpretation and application.
Development and reasoning
I scaffolded assessment from tasks with lower cognitive demands toward more complex interpretation and synthesis. Early activities established understanding of individual elements; later activities asked students to explain relationships and construct an overall meaning.
I separated understanding the allegory from applying it to everyday life. This gave students a conceptual foundation before asking them to examine social media, grades, news headlines, and memories as partial representations of reality.
Rise provided the course structure, while embedded Storyline interactions supported activities that needed additional flexibility. For reflective activities, I wanted students to examine their reasoning without forcing every response into a single predetermined answer.
The result is an introductory experience designed to establish both philosophical vocabulary and habits of questioning that can carry into later lessons.