ID Philosophy

As a public K-12 educator and bartender for a multi-million dollar movie theater corporation, I have taken my fair share of online professional development trainings. Over the past four years since starting both positions, I have participated in some that I enjoyed and some that I have mindlessly clicked through just to get my certificate of completion. As my instructional design mindset developed, I started looking at these trainings more critically and asked myself questions. “Which design model would I choose if I were to re-create this active assailant training for the school district?” and “Did this training on Food and Alcohol Service align with the organization’s learning objectives?”

As a Learning Experience Designer myself, I believe that the Analysis phase of the ADDIE Model (or preparation phase of the SAM Model), is the most important part of the project. This is what I aim for every time I start a creating a new training or interactive lesson. Just like how great films start with great scripts, great trainings strive to understand its audience and the learning objectives that the client wants its learners to grasp. While I believe in the power of gamification and game-based learning, I never set out to make a training “fun” for the sake of it being “fun.” Rather, the fun comes as a byproduct of a well-researched, well-designed program that has done the leg-work before any heavy-lifting starts. The project samples found on the next page best demonstrate this practice put to use.