Here are some samples from my professional work as an Instructional Designer.
Authoring Tools
I design and develop e-Learning courses and experiences for learners. I love developing content with authoring tools (and I am always ready to learn something new):
- Articulate Rise 360 (interactive e-learning courses)
- Articulate Storyline 360 (interactive e-learning courses)
- Camtasia 2020 (video, audio)
- Vyond, Doodly (animated videos)
- PicMonkey, BeFunky, Canva (graphic design)
- Piktochart (infographics)
Here’s a fun little video I made with Vyond this year! If you like it, please tell that to Youtube!
New Hire Onboarding Program
I was tasked with creating a comprehensive New Hire Onboarding Program for the Services team. I was solely responsible for:
- Analyzing the learners
- Collaborating with team leads to determine the critical behaviors for new hires
- Identifying and partnering with Subject Matter Experts from across the organization to develop the performance objectives
- Performing needs analysis to determine course content and develop performance supports
- Creating a 4-Level strategic evaluation plan (using the Kirkpatrick philosophy)
- Performing multiple gap analyses to identify needs beyond training
- Designing and developing every course
- Creating countless images
- Writing assessments and learning activities
- Constructing the courses in the LMS
- Creating and implementing a social learning program
- Creating a coaching program
- Authoring training guides for each participant (new hire, hiring manager, new hire coach)
- Adding the new hires into the LMS and monitoring their progress/giving them feedback
- Implementing the entire onboarding program (acting as ILT, learning activity facilitator, panel facilitator, and course director)
- Conducting evaluation at each Kirkpatrick level including surveys, focus groups, LMS data analysis, and leader feedback
- Creating SOPs and a task calendar to standardize the work flow for my team to enable a seamless transition for other team members to assume my course director duties
Performance Improvement Strategies
Something I always think about (thanks to Kirkpatrick, Cathy Moore, and Human Performance Theory): Sometimes Training is not the answer, which is where the gap analysis comes into play.
From the outset: If we work backwards from what we want to see in the performance environment, we can identify the Critical Behaviors which allow us to perform gap analyses—what do learners need to do? What are they doing now? Why aren’t they doing it?
Sometimes we find we need documentation (a guide, job aid, SOP, or checklist), sometimes we need a role adjustment, sometimes we need a tool, sometimes we need motivation or habit change—and training cannot solve all these problems…
Social Learning
Given a context that supports Social Learning, it is one of the most powerful strategies we can use for training and development.
Typically, Social Learning creates support or scaffolding for learners as they navigate the Zone of Proximal Development in their Performance Environment. Relatedness, or meaningful social connection, is a basic psychological need and a linchpin for the development of Self-Determination. Depending on the relationships, Social Learning supports Bandura’s observational learning/modeling, Siemen’s and Downes’ Connectivism, Vygotsky’s ZPD and MKO, and Collins’ Cognitive Apprenticeship.
Equip the Team/Train the Trainer
I’m a subject matter expert in learning science and instructional design. One of my favorite ways to impact training is to equip those who are creating and delivering training. Trainers are working in the trenches and most have an innate sense of learner-centered design coupled with critical on-the-job experience. I see my role as being the one to help them get results more efficiently and predictably.
I enable learning professionals to break through to the next level. This work is satisfying to me because I love collaborating and applying learning science to real world contexts. Investing in learning professionals multiplies my efforts, allowing me to impact more learners than I could on my own.
Infographics
They say a picture is worth a thousand words—but infographics convey more than words—arranging multiple images and key ideas to convey information. Infographics summarize data, concepts, processes, and more. Using images with words leverages multimedia theory, summarizing complex content by presenting information more efficiently, which appeals to existing schema, creates scaffolding through order and organization of content, and reduces cognitive load. One infographic can do the work of summarizing a whole chapter or process and can be an excellent performance support or job aid.
Learning Activities
Authentic learning occurs when activities or projects offer students an opportunity to directly apply their knowledge or skills to real-world situations. When these activities are present in the context of the self-paced training course, they follow immediately after the course and knowledge check. Some assignments might be combined with social learning by having learners share the products with one another. These assignments, combined with learning activities within the self-paced training course and the course assessment, are intended to put the learners knowledge into action.
Please click the button below to contact me if you would like to see learning activity samples because they are password protected. If you already have the password, click the “Visit the Page” button.
Games & Game-Based Learning
In Game-based Learning, we borrow game principles to provide structure and interest in learning activities or even whole courses. Games and Game-based Learning promote student engagement and increase motivation to learn and to persist in the activity.
Compliance Training: Information Security
I partnered with Information Security professionals to develop a course to protects customers and the business and to meet compliance guidelines. In this course, the team members are equipped to:
- Identify the key components of the Information and Security Policy.
- Perform their role in reporting and responding to an Incident.
- Use the Priority & Severity classifications for an Incident.
- Recognize the members of the Incident Response Team.
Please click the button below to contact me if you would like to see compliance course samples because they are password protected. If you already have the password, click the “Visit the Page” button.
Self-Paced Software Training Library
I partnered with one Subject Matter Expert to create a training library which is shared by new hires and thousands of customers. This was a huge undertaking that was accomplished in a little over six months (we had an interruption mid-project due to the Covid layoff of my SME). This product line had no current training—customers only had access to long-winded, obsolete webinars and out-of-date documentation. This project required me to assume many different roles and use a variety of tools (click the link above to see more detail and some samples).
Please click the button below to contact me if you would like to see the interactive software training samples because they are password protected. If you already have the password, click the “Visit the Page” button.
Academic Work
My time in Higher Education was such a delight. I worked at LSU Dental School (now LSUHSC) in the Dental Hygiene Program as a faculty member, the Clinic Supervisor, a CPR instructor, a C.E. instructor, an academic advisor, and more. When I entered Instructional Design, my first gig was an internship in Higher Ed at Samford University for the Department of Social Work (amazing people!). This link will take you to some of my internship work as well as some projects and papers from grad school.