Built by people who have spent their careers producing instructional content.
The Teaching Studio is a course production studio in Durham, North Carolina. Not a video studio that takes course work: a studio designed, equipped and staffed around the single job of turning an expert’s knowledge into a course people finish.
From ed tech to a studio built for teaching
Before there was a studio there was a producer. Jon Watkins spent his early career in ed tech producing graduate-level courses for American University, Syracuse, Harvard, USC, Rice, SMU and others, learning lesson by lesson what makes a course clear, engaging and worth finishing.
He founded the Dynamic Video Group in 2018 because the courses he was producing deserved better video than the industry was giving them, live and on demand. When the world moved online, the company became a global leader in innovative, interactive live video, producing broadcasts and live classes for universities and Fortune companies.
In 2024 Jon led the rebrand to The Teaching Studio as co-founder, and the name says what the company had become: a course production studio (and so much more!).
- A career in ed techProducing graduate courses for leading universities, and learning what makes learners finish.
- Dynamic Video Group foundedHigh-quality video for live and on-demand courses, from the people who produce the courses.
- A leader in interactive live videoLive, interactive productions for universities and Fortune companies, with a studio built around a live audience.
- The Teaching StudioRebranded and refocused as a course production studio, with Course Planner and a stage designed for teaching.
- Launch of Course PlannerThe studio’s own course creation software: it interviews an expert, or works from a book or deck, and drafts the outline, lesson scripts, slides and broadcast graphics for approval before a single lesson is filmed.
Jon Watkins
Co-Founder and Executive Producer, The Teaching Studio
Jon is a leader in the instructional video space. He founded the Dynamic Video Group in 2018 after a career in ed tech, saw early that both live and on-demand courses needed broadcast-quality video to hold a learner’s attention, and built a company around delivering it. Under his direction it became a global leader in innovative, interactive live video, and in 2024 he oversaw its rebrand to The Teaching Studio as co-founder.
At The Teaching Studio he has produced content for Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Caterpillar, Invisalign and Syngenta, and for institutions like UNC Kenan-Flagler, where the studio has produced live special-topics courses for five years. Before the studio, he produced graduate-level courses for American University, Syracuse University, Harvard, the University of Southern California, Rice and SMU.
Most recently, Jon and the team led development of Course Planner, the studio’s course creation software. It interviews an expert, or starts from their book or slides, and drafts the course outline, every lesson script in the expert’s own voice, the slide decks and the broadcast graphics that go on the stage screens, all built on the instructional design principles behind the studio’s university and corporate work, and all approved by the client before filming. Software can write words. Knowing what makes a course clear, engaging and worth paying for comes from years of producing them, and that is what Jon brings to every course the studio makes, from the planning interview to the last edit. Course Planner puts that experience into the first draft of every client’s course, and Jon still leads the room on filming days and in the studio’s live bootcamps.
Why experts and institutions trust this studio with their courses
- We have produced courses for a living, for yearsGraduate programs, Fortune training, live university classes. The best practices in every course we make were learned on courses people paid for and finished.
- The studio was designed for teachingThe audience wall, the smartboard, the anchor desk and the main stage exist so an instructor can teach the way they teach, and be produced like television while doing it.
- We built the softwareCourse Planner turns an interview, a book or a deck into an outline, scripts and slides built on instructional design principles. No other studio arrives at filming day this prepared.
- Clients come backFive years of live courses for UNC Kenan-Flagler. Programs for Microsoft, Caterpillar, ExxonMobil and Syngenta. People who fly in from across the country to film for a day.
