Designing with Love

Hybrid work has changed the ground rules for training, and most learning designs still act like everyone is sitting in the same room. When we do that, remote learners get a smaller slice of the experience: the side conversations they can’t hear, the whiteboard they can’t see, the questions they can’t easily ask, and the participation that never quite opens up.  We start with a future-ready signal...

Grades can look great while real-world readiness quietly falls apart. Jackie sat down with Rob Heller, founder of the Boost Program and author of The Missing Course for Today’s Youth , to dig into the skills schools often assume students already have and why that assumption is costing young people in relationships, mental health, and career growth. Rob breaks down “soft skills” for what they reall...

In this episode, Jackie walks through what she calls Microlearning 2.0, which is a future-ready approach that treats microlearning as small, purposeful learning moments that help people understand, practice, remember, or apply something useful. We talk about why this matters for adult learners in busy workplaces and higher education, especially when someone needs help at the moment of need. Instea...

AI can produce a polished paragraph in seconds, but that doesn’t mean students are learning to write. Jackie sat down with Michael Leggs, a college professor and the founder of Smartleby, to unpack a more useful way to think about artificial intelligence in education: not as a replacement for writers, but as a revision tutor that helps writers grow. Along the way, we dig into what “authentic voice...

A course can feel fair and still be unfair if it forces every learner to take the same route. We’re seeing a major shift in instructional design and online education: learning experiences are moving from fixed pathways to adaptive pathways that respond to learner needs, performance, and progress. The exciting part isn’t the tech itself. It’s the chance to offer the right support at the right momen...

Content is the easy part. The hard part is designing conditions in which people actually learn, feel safe enough to struggle, and walk away able to use what they practiced when the stakes are real. Jackie sits down with curriculum and learning experience designer Nicole Weber to discuss human-centered instructional design that goes beyond information delivery to encompass culture, connection, and...

Technology can personalize learning, automate tasks, and deliver faster feedback, but it can also leave learners confused, overwhelmed, and tired. We dig into a simple question every instructional designer and educator needs to ask right now: what does the learning experience actually feel like for the learner? We build on the Future Ready Learning series with a human-centered approach to edtech,...

AI can generate course content in minutes, but it can also produce confident nonsense, biased visuals, and nonexistent citations. We close out our mini-series with Dr. Dwayne Wood by zooming out on how quickly AI has evolved from basic text chatbots to multimodal tools that draft e-learning, images, and more, and why that speed raises the stakes for educators and instructional designers. We break...

AI can write a quiz question in seconds, but it cannot tell you what your learners truly need or what’s ethical, accessible, and aligned. That’s the tension Jackie's unpacking as we continue the series Future Ready Learning: Designing Education for What Comes Next . If generative AI feels exciting and overwhelming at the same time, you’re not alone, and you’re not doing it wrong. The goal is...

AI can make you faster, but it can also make you lazy. That tension sits at the center of Jackie's conversation with Dr. Dwayne Wood as we bring together the big ideas from our mini-series and get practical about using generative AI for innovative instructional design. We dig into rapid prototyping as one of the clearest wins: using AI to generate multiple starting points for activities, scen...

2027 is closer than it feels, and the future of learning is already showing up in the tools we use, the questions learners ask, and the pressure to prove real value in education and training. Jackie is kicking off a new 14-part series, Future-Ready Learning, with a practical challenge for instructional designers and educators: stop treating “the future” like a shiny tech wishlist and start designi...

The fastest way to ruin an adult learning experience is to start with a shiny tool and hope an outcome appears later. Jackie sat down with Dr. Dwayne Wood to get back to the foundations that keep instructional design effective, especially in online and asynchronous learning where motivation, time pressure, and cognitive load can make or break engagement. We dig into adult learning principles throu...

Slides are the artifact everyone recognizes, and that’s exactly why the myth survives: if a stakeholder can only see the deck, they assume the work is decoration. Jackie closes out the Myths in Instructional Design and Education series by pushing back on “instructional design is just making slides” and naming what professional instructional designers actually do long before anyone picks a template...

If your learners are exhausted before they even reach the content, the problem might not be motivation. It might be the mode. Jackie welcomes Dr. Dwayne Wood back for part two of the mini-series to unpack multimodal learning for adult learners and what it really means to design with intention instead of stacking more media on top of a course.  We dig into cognitive load theory and why the same con...

Class size is not a harmless detail; it’s a force that quietly rewrites the learning experience. When a course jumps from 15 learners to 75, the same discussion prompt can turn into noise, feedback timelines can stretch, and learners can feel invisible even when the content is strong. In this episode, Jackie is tackling a stubborn myth in instructional design and education: “Class size doesn’t aff...

Generative AI is moving from “helpful tool” to something that can quietly shape how people think, write, and learn, and that changes everything about curriculum design. I sit down with Dr. Dwayne Wood, an experienced educator and curriculum developer with a background in military instruction, to unpack what generative AI in education actually means when you care about real learning outcomes, not j...

Interactivity is one of those words that sounds obvious until you try to design for it. If you’ve ever felt pressure to add branching scenarios, animations, or expensive eLearning interactions to prove a course is “engaging,” we’re calling that myth out directly: interactivity does not require fancy tools. In this episode, Jackie walks you through why this belief has lasted in instructional design...

Shiny training is everywhere right now, and a lot of it still fails the moment learners go back to work. We sit down with e-Learning strategist and Ninja Tropic CEO Erick Prospero to get honest about what “engaging” digital learning actually means when outcomes are on the line. If your organization is adding video, animation, gamification, or AI tools and hoping that fixes attention and performanc...

AI can generate a course outline, a script, and a quiz in seconds, so it’s easy to wonder if instructional designers are next on the replacement list. We slow that fear down and look at what’s actually happening when AI enters the learning design workflow, and why “fast content” is not the same thing as effective instruction. We unpack the myth “AI will replace instructional designers” and name th...

Your inbox is designed for speed. Attackers know it, and too many training programs pretend we’re all making perfect choices with unlimited time and zero stress. Jackie had a great conversation with Lee Anderson, a cybersecurity professional with 16+ years of experience reducing human risk, to unpack what really drives security decisions and how better learning design can change behavior.  We get...

Clicking, laughing, and “having fun” can look like engagement, but it can also be a mirage. In this episode, Jackie unpacks a stubborn instructional design myth that shows up in classrooms, eLearning, and workplace training: engagement means entertainment. If you’ve ever felt pressure to add games, humor, flashy visuals, music, competition, or constant interaction to keep attention, this conversat...

A suffix can look like a tiny detail on paper, but it can carry an entire family story. Jackie sits down with Dr. Tamara Nall to talk about Junia, a formal naming tradition designed to give daughters the kind of visible legacy marker that “Junior” has long given sons. The conversation starts with naming, then opens into something bigger: identity, representation, and what changes in a culture when...

A quiz can be quick, clean, and easy to score, but does it actually prove learning? We take on a stubborn myth in instructional design and education: that assessments must be tests to be valid. In this episode, Jackie explains why tests are so often treated as the gold standard, from the comfort of “objectivity” to the pressure for efficiency in schools, certification programs, and workplace train...

You can feel the moment when a career finally makes sense: you read a course list, something clicks, and you realize there’s a name for the work you’ve wanted to do all along. That’s the energy behind Jackie's conversation with Naomi Allen, who recently completed her master’s in instructional design at Grand Canyon University after starting down a very different path in clinical mental health...

More slides do not equal more learning, and if you have ever felt pressured to “add just one more resource,” you already know how quickly a course can turn into a content dump. We take on a stubborn instructional design myth: the idea that piling on readings, videos, examples, and links automatically improves understanding. It sounds responsible, but it often creates confusion, weak retention, and...