Case Studies in Effective Learning Design
"The role of the instructional designer is to inspire teachers and students to rethink what is possible in their personal learning journeys. The key is to stay curious and always be teachable whether you're teaching or being taught."
Veronica Thomas
Founder & Principal Learning Designer
IT'S EDUMENTARY
Veronica Thomas
Founder & Principal Learning Designer
Whether designing an online course, website, or presentation, I am guided by the belief that teaching and learning are collaborative processes that require humility, patience, effort, and consistency:
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humility to be open to learning,
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patience with yourself and others going through the often messy process of learning,
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effort to strengthen the "muscles" of the mind, and
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consistency to develop the lifelong habit of learning.
The samples below provide a few illustrations of my design approach and the rationale behind my design decisions.
Please contact me when you're ready to discuss your next learning design project.
Organization
Cost Analysis in Practice (CAP) Project is an initiative, initially funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, to provide free, on-demand tools, guidance, and technical assistance to researchers and practitioners who are planning or conducting economic evaluations to inform the delivery of education to students in the United States. The resources will be maintained longer term by EdResearcher.
Industry
Independent statistics, research, and evaluation for K-12
Project Title
CAP Project Online Modules
Target Audience
Researchers and practitioners who are planning or conducting economic evaluations to inform the delivery of education to students in the United States
Project Description
The CAP Project Online is a series of instructional modules demonstrating how to execute cost analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis of educational programs. Each module consists of multiple instructional videos and activities.
Challenge
Design on-demand, online modules that presented highly technical and complex content in "bite-sized" pieces to help make the content accessible yet achieve the key objectives of helping the end-user design a cost analysis, collect cost data, and report cost analysis results. The online modules would be hosted on the client's website.
Solution
Utilized the website's native features along with external tools to create an online experience that encouraged engagement, discovery, and application of the cost analysis concepts.
Outcomes
The client was quite pleased with the final results which presented the online modules in a user-friendly and engaging way that supported accessibility and a variety of learning styles.
Project Description
The Founder and Managing Director of EdResearcher, an independent research, evaluation, and development organization, approached me for help with designing a website to help disseminate tools, publications, and instructional materials for education researchers and practitioners. The project also included designing a branding kit which included logo, logo animation, letterhead, email signature, and presentation templates. The client was delighted with the results.
"It's Edumentary brings unmatched talent in visual design, online presence, and engaging pedagogical strategies for communicating content and building learner skills. Veronica worked with me and my colleagues on a series of online instructional modules funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education. The result is beyond anything we ever imagined in terms of content quality, variety, and presentation. Importantly, the content also meets requirements for accessibility. Veronica has remarkable skills in listening to a concept explained verbally and being able to translate it into visuals, video, text, and activities to make it concrete. She is now helping me build a brand and online presence for an education research organization and I can barely contain my excitement from one meeting to the next to see what she comes up with!"
Fiona Hollands
Senior Researcher; Founder & Managing Director
Project Description
Design course in Canvas for non-finance majors to introduce them to fundamental financial terms and concepts. Also redesigned course site template to make for a more visually engaging and user-friendly layout that blended branding from two organizations.
Challenge
Design asynchronous, on-demand, online course designing around video content and incorporating interactive media to help translate jargon and provide ways for them to connect with unfamilar concepts.
Solution
Enhanced the lecture content with media, knowledge checks, scenarios, and knowledge checks to help the students self-assess their pre and post-knowledge and connect with the content beyond the theoretical and always seeking to answer the question, "So what?"
Outcomes
The client was quite happy with the course experience and the course site design and uses the course site as a model to stakeholders of what is possible in reimagining the online learning experience in Canvas.
Organization
UTA Division of Student Success
Industry
Higher Education
Course Title
Career Preparation and Student Success
Target Audience
Non-traditional undergraduate degree students who are returning to or beginning college
Project Description
A new student course for new transfer students. This course will cover topics to help students transition to UTA and achieve academic and personal success through recognition of campus resources and community building. Students will discover effective ways to balance personal and career obligations with academic goals. The course will allow for the discovery of marketable skills of their chosen academic discipline and the professions associated with their program of study. Experiential learning opportunities will be discussed, including undergraduate research, leadership, global engagement, community engagement and career development.
Challenge
Redesign a 15-week classroom-based course to a 15-week asynchronous online course in Canvas LMS. The course is required for all freshmen students but had some issues with organization, instructional clarity, and student engagement.
Solution
Reorganized the course flow and edited content to be more relevant for the non-traditional student. Also improved the look and feel of the content and added dynamic and interactive elements to encourage curiosity and exploration of the content.
Outcomes
The instructor was excited with the changes which included improvements to the course organization and inclusion of multi-modal learning opportunities that provided more variety for students to engage with the content and with each other leading to deeper levels of comprehension and application of the course concepts.
Sample Activities
One of the modules in the Career Preparation and Student Success course provided a very dense list of web pages that was quite overwhelming for the user to navigate.
I designed this interactive presentation to humanize the content, engage the students in active problem-solving, and draw their attention to key resources that would be the most relevant to them as non-traditional and transfer students.
This "discovery wheel" uses hotspots to present a lot of textual information in a compact way and in bite-sized pieces. The student can explore the information in a non-linear way versus viewing the dense information as a wall of text on the course page.
I used a simple branching feature with visuals to make the content relatable and to stimulate the learner's curiosity to learn about each money personality type. It's not engagement for engagement's sake but engagement for learning and reflection.
Organization
UTA College of Business
Industry
Higher Education
Course Title
International Management
Target Audience
Undergraduate degree and non-degree students
"Veronica brings a tremendous wealth of expertise to course design. She has been able to find a solution to every problem I had. She also adds great value to the course by identifying materials and exercises that are very relevant to the course. Best of all, every time I have messed up something, she has responded with a smile and helped me out of it. I am truly fortunate to have Veronica as a course designer and as a friend."
Abdul Rasheed
Professor of Private Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
Course Description
With greater globalization of economies and industries, managers are being increasingly challenged to manage organizations within a global context. This course seeks to provide students with the skills, knowledge and sensitivity required to be successful managers in organizations and organizational units within a multinational environment. Topics covered include the analysis of environmental forces, the characteristics of international strategies and the importance of organizational design and strategic control in the management of multinational enterprises.
Challenge
Redesign the pre-existing 15-week classroom-based course to an 8-week asynchronous online course in Canvas LMS. The course had to meet complex indicators of quality established by external and internal reviewers in areas that included interactive instruction, course organization, measurable learning objectives, alignment between objectives and assessments, accessibility, and the innovative use of instructional technologies.
Solution
Influenced faculty buy-in to transform the course from passive consumption of PowerPoints to an interactive learning experience that incorporated short videos and discovery activities designed to spark student curiosity and facilitate opportunities for meaningful engagement and exploration of key course concepts.
Outcomes
Course redesign resulted in increased student engagement and persistence. The professor was surprised that student performance, rather than decreasing, (as previously feared when going from an in-person to asynchronous online course), was comparable and sometimes better than student performance in the face-to-face course.
This is just a very small sampling of my work. Please contact me for a free consultation.