LEARNING & INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

Designing clear, engaging learning experiences through education, technology, visual communication, and creative problem-solving.

My background brings together more than 15 years of teaching, curriculum development, multimedia production, and visual communication. For the past six years, I have worked in virtual education, supporting learners across digital courses while creating instructional videos, visual demonstrations, supplemental resources, and individualized learning support.

I approach instructional design from both a learner’s and an educator’s perspective. I consider what learners need to understand, where they may encounter barriers, how information can be organized more clearly, and which combination of text, visuals, media, technology, practice, and feedback can best support the learning objective.

Virtual Learning Design & Student Support

Imagine Learning | 2020–Present

As a virtual instructor, I support a large caseload of students taking online courses in photography, digital art and design, studio art, art appreciation, and art history.

Because students enter online courses with different levels of prior knowledge, technology access, confidence, and learning needs, effective instruction often requires more than the materials already provided in the course.

I create supplemental instructional videos, visual demonstrations, step-by-step directions, examples, and individualized feedback to clarify difficult concepts and help students work more independently. I also review student performance and submitted work to identify misunderstandings and determine where additional instruction or a different explanation may be needed.

In my current virtual role, I manage instruction and learner support for more than 300 students across multiple schools and districts, balancing individualized intervention with high-volume progress monitoring, communication, assessment, and course support.

Learning design focus: online learning · instructional media · learner support · assessment and feedback · differentiation · course improvement

Unit_2_Alternative_Activity.pdf

Designing for Different Technology Access

Mobile Photography Learning Resources

Photography instruction often assumes that every learner has access to a digital camera with manual controls. In a virtual environment, that is not always the case.

I developed alternative instructional resources for students completing photography activities with phone cameras. Rather than simply removing technical requirements, I identified the underlying learning objectives and redesigned directions so students could still explore concepts such as lighting, movement, perspective, composition, and visual decision-making using the technology available to them.

I also created simplified two-page activity guides and clear instructions for transferring photographs from a phone or camera to a computer, organizing the images into a presentation, and exporting the completed work as a PDF.

This work reflects an important part of my instructional-design approach: preserve the learning goal while reducing unnecessary barriers to participation.

Learning design focus: accessibility · usability · alternative learning pathways · clear instructions · visual hierarchy · technology access

Making Complex Information Visual

Penn State Science & Engineering Projects

My design and animation work has also given me experience translating specialized subject matter into visual communication for audiences outside the field.

For Penn State’s Eberly College of Science, College of Engineering, and Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, I created or animated visual materials related to scientific and technical topics. These projects required understanding source material, working with subject-matter experts, preserving the accuracy of technical information, and determining how imagery, movement, pacing, and organization could make complex ideas easier to understand.

These projects also required managing assets, revisions, stakeholder feedback, production timelines, and final deliverables from concept through completion.

Learning design focus: instructional media · scientific visualization · subject-matter collaboration · visual communication · multimedia design

Unit_1_Alternative_Activity_Casual_Portraits.pdf

AI & Emerging Technology

I actively explore emerging digital and generative AI tools as part of my broader interest in technology, creativity, education, and workflow design.

My approach is centered on intentional and responsible use. I consider where technology can improve planning, ideation, communication, creative workflows, or productivity while also considering accuracy, authorship, privacy, academic integrity, and the importance of human judgment.

My current teaching environment also requires clear boundaries around student use of AI-generated writing and artwork. That experience has made the questions surrounding AI in education especially relevant to my work: not simply whether a tool can be used, but when its use supports the learning objective, when it undermines it, and how expectations should be communicated clearly.

I am especially interested in continuing to explore how emerging technologies can support faculty, instructional designers, and learners while preserving meaningful human participation in the learning process.

Curriculum, Teaching & Facilitation

My instructional-design perspective is grounded in direct experience with learners.

I have taught children, teenagers, college students, and adults in virtual classrooms, higher education, schools, camps, workshops, studios, and community programs. I previously taught undergraduate students while completing my MFA at Penn State University and have developed curriculum and interdisciplinary learning experiences throughout my career.

Working directly with learners has taught me to recognize where instructions break down, when an example is more useful than additional explanation, how feedback influences progress, and why learning experiences need enough structure to guide learners without removing opportunities for experimentation and independent problem-solving.

How I Approach Learning Design

I begin with the learner and the desired outcome.

From there, I consider the clearest path between what a learner currently understands and what they need to be able to know, create, demonstrate, or do. I use visual communication, multimedia, technology, assessment, feedback, and thoughtful organization to make that path easier to navigate.

My experience as an educator also makes iteration a natural part of my process. When learners struggle, I look for the reason. The solution may be a clearer instruction, a visual example, a different sequence, another opportunity for practice, a technology adjustment, or a change in how feedback is delivered.

Areas of Practice

Instructional Design · Curriculum Development · Online Learning · Multimedia Learning · Instructional Video · Visual Communication · Assessment & Feedback · Differentiated Instruction · Accessibility & Usability · Educational Technology · Scientific & Technical Visualization · Adobe Creative Cloud · LMS-Based Learning · Google Workspace · Microsoft 365 · Microsoft Teams

Let’s Connect

I’m interested in opportunities that bring together learning, technology, visual communication, and creative problem-solving, particularly in instructional design, learning experience design, curriculum development, educational media, and higher education.

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