My Design Process
I designed over 150 credit hours of coursework at UMGC as the lead of cross-functional teams. This included four complete master’s programs in business and cybersecurity, aligning and re-mixing hundreds of OERs into custom textbooks for each course, and ensuring 100% ADA and Digital Rights compliance. Elements of my process are below.
Process – Analysis
What do I want students to learn? I start with the end in mind. Often called backward design or backwards planning, I list the changes I want to see in students. What new knowledge, skills, attitudes should the learning experience impart? I document, revise, and track these. I’ve worked with various models including learning outcomes, learning objectives, and competency based education (CBE). Please click through these captioned screenshots of actual documents.
Process – Design and Development
Building on the analysis I’ve done, I look at how the technology will allow students to view content, practice, and be assessed.
I designed MBA to be a project-based course with authentic digital storytelling. All of the projects in this program interweave real business problems into a fictional company’s growth over time. The learning resources were hand-selected OERs customized for each project. I followed the same process for the three cybersecurity programs.
I pushed for LMS/CMS integration that allowed for rapid development of prototypes in the actual user environment. I scheduled rolling developments project by project, giving the team time to review and design iteratively. I also initiated an informal early QA process that shaved days off of the final QA before implementation.
MBA is project-based program with a step-based user interface. 
I storyboarded authentic narratives to deliver content and problems for students to solve. 
An authentic problem to solve is presented in an Excel spreadsheet. 
All learning resources needed to complete project are linked from the project steps, such as Ethical Business Decision Making, a resource I authored myself. 
Draft of a learning resource undergoing developmental editing by the SME, an editor, and myself. 
Here is a screenshot of the final version in the classroom. 
I oversaw design and development of the hundreds of learning resources that comprise the textbook for the entire program. 
I lead a successful pilot to integrate a third party business simulation, Capsim. 
Capsim is now used by all students in MBA program.
Process – Implementation
Users login to d2l’s Brightspace to access their section of the course. MBA typically has 5-10 sections per course per semester, so hundreds of UMGC students per semester use courses I’ve worked on. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) delivers all of the content for MBA. I’ve worked with other methods of content delivery, such as internal servers and S3 buckets, online textbook providers, and UMGC library materials.
Process – Evaluation
I consult with faculty to see what they have noticed. I look at a number of data sources to see how students are performing, what resources they are using, and what they say about the course: page hits and video views; grades and quiz performance, student evaluations.
Smaller projects
I wrote this in-person training exercise to prepare new student advisors for an in-person training session. I created fictional personas based on UMGC student demographic data to add empathy to the exercise. I also worked with an advising manager to structure the detail of the exercise so that it would represent an authentic interaction with students.
In this video, I explain a storyboard for a bare bones training to prepare advisors for consequences of sequestration in 2013.
This branching management scenario introduces grad students to a variety of research practices in order to answer a real-world problem facing the restaurant industry. Part of a pilot. Never implemented.
Writing Samples, EdOptions, Inc, 2009-2012
The units below were designed and written by me. The images/animations were either procured by me from the public domain or storyboarded by me and then completed by our graphics team. [update: Unfortunately, the Flash animations are no longer supported by your browser. Third party plugins revive some functionality.]
The target audience is high school students recovering credits lost due to extended absence from school. Our company used the Lexile Framework for Reading as a guideline, aiming for about a ninth grade level at 1050L. All units include formative assessments. Some include reading guides to scaffold student note-taking.
Please contact me for a password if I have not already provided you with one.
Earth Science – I was team lead on this course.
Physical Education – I was a team member on this course.