Learning Experience Design for Changemakers

A live reflection exercise that turns everything you know into one clear starting point. You know you have something worth teaching — but the second someone asks what your course is actually about, everything comes out at once and it turns into noise. This episode walks you through the exact exercise Renee uses with clients to find the real starting point: the Roots stage of the Roots to Canopy Me...

You have something powerful to teach — but the moment you sit down to design it, the pull toward content takes over. You start listing everything you know, every story, every framework, every caveat. And suddenly it's a wall of water, not a river. This week, Renee shares the origin story of the Roots to Canopy Method: what backwards design gave her, where it left a gap, and the unexpected mome...

Have you ever called what you do a course, a program, or a membership — and felt like something was still slightly off? That feeling might be about more than the name. In this episode, Renee Koster gives you a clear, simple definition of a learning experience and explains why the distinction between learning experience design and instructional design actually changes what you build — not just how...

A 1774 home, a curious executive director, and the untold stories she's determined to unravel. What does it take to turn a 250-year-old log house into a living, breathing piece of its community? In this episode, Renee sits down with Molly Jobson, executive director of the Morgan Log House, to find out — from her winding path into museum leadership to the food drives and descendant volunteers t...

What a tiger at the Philadelphia Zoo taught me about course design I stood in front of the big cat exhibit at the Philadelphia Zoo and had a full curriculum design realization — and this episode is about what I learned. The Philadelphia Zoo's Zoo360 is a network of trails that lets animals roam freely through the zoo. The day we visited, a tiger was walking past the lunch tables. Ten feet away...

What does it look like when someone takes purposeful feedback, applies it in real time, and keeps building? In this inaugural episode of Learning Experience Design for Change Makers , Renee Koster sits down with Elise White — founder and executive director of the Let's Change Forward Foundation, workforce and wellness consultant, and co-host of the Queen Beauty Podcast. Elise shares how a five-day...

You built something. You know your stuff. And somewhere between your expertise and your learner's transformation, something's getting lost. That's exactly why this podcast exists. In this intro episode, Renee Koster — Learning Experience Designer and Strategist — lays out exactly who this show is for, what makes it different, and what you can expect. This is not a podcast about building fast. It's...