Designing with Love

The fastest way to kill a good learning goal is to blame the format instead of fixing the design. We’re kicking off a new series on myths in instructional design and education by taking on one of the biggest, most stubborn claims out there: online learning is less effective than in-person learning. We get why this belief sticks. A lot of digital learning has felt disconnected, confusing, passive,...

Accessibility doesn’t have to feel like a mountain you climb alone. Jackie sat down with accessibility advocate Maxwell Ivey to turn big ideas into small, repeatable steps that make your website and content welcoming to every user. Instead of chasing every rule at once, we focus on process over panic: define the user problem, choose the smallest next fix, and build momentum. We start with the high...

AI tools are getting faster, louder, and harder to ignore, but that doesn’t mean your growth has to feel chaotic. We wrap the AI-Ready Designer Series with a clear 90-day plan that turns experimentation into a repeatable practice you can actually defend, document, and share. If you’ve been learning a little here and there but still feel scattered, this roadmap is built to help you move with intent...

What if your best presentation didn’t just earn applause—it moved people to act? Jackie sat down with Dr. Danny Brassell to map a clearer path from inspiration to conversion, blending hard-won classroom lessons with decades on the stage to show exactly how to make talks that stick, spread, and sell without feeling salesy. We start with the only scoreboard that matters: how many listeners take the...

AI can make instructional design feel faster overnight, but speed is the easiest thing to celebrate and the easiest thing to misunderstand. When leaders ask whether AI is truly helping learning and development teams, “We used it a lot” is not an answer. In this episode, Jackie walks through how to prove AI impact with credibility using lightweight workflow metrics that tell the real story, includi...

Ever watch a promising writing class lose steam by midterm? We’ve been there, and we built this conversation to flip that script using the ARCS model—Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction—as a practical blueprint for motivated, higher-quality writing across live and online courses. With award-winning author and curriculum developer Ruth A. Douthit, we unpack what actually keeps students e...

AI tools can make learning design faster and more creative, but the moment a tool touches prompts, uploads, learner responses, employee information, or system integrations, approvals can feel like a hard stop. We talk through the real shift many instructional designers are living right now: AI tool selection is no longer only a learning design decision. It’s also a technology decision, a security...

Accessibility isn’t a box to tick at launch; it’s the backbone of products people actually trust. Jackie sat down with Maxwell “The Blind Blogger” Ivey—founder of The Accessibility Advantage and longtime advocate for inclusive digital experiences—to unpack how small, thoughtful changes can eliminate friction, reduce support costs, and open doors to more learners and customers. Max shares four move...

A bot can sound warm, responsive, and confident, and still teach the wrong thing. That’s the tension we dig into as we explore AI tutors, AI coaches, and practice bots through the lens that matters most to instructional designers: practice design that improves real performance, not just chat transcripts. Jackie walks through why AI can absolutely help us scale practice, create interactions faster,...

Training that doesn’t change behavior is just content, and content alone won’t move a business metric. Jackie sat down with Dr. Steven Linley, a learning strategist and adult learning expert, to unpack how to turn “we need training” into performance that lasts. From the first stakeholder request to the final coaching touchpoint, Steven shows how to investigate like a detective, separate red herrin...

AI can generate outlines, scripts, quizzes, scenarios, and slide drafts in minutes. That sounds like freedom, until you realize the real danger is volume: more content, more assets, more “resources” that don’t actually change what learners do. We’re making the case for a different kind of value in the AI era of instructional design and learning experience design: becoming the learning architect wh...

What if assessment made thinking visible and turned AI into a learning partner instead of a shortcut? Jackie sat down with Hamza Sami to close our series by unpacking practical ways to design for real understanding—where reasoning, judgment, and context take center stage. We start by reframing purpose: assessment is for learning, not just measurement. That lens leads to formative moves that build...

AI can help you generate course content in minutes, but if you’ve ever looked at the output and thought, “This doesn’t sound like me,” you already know the hidden cost: inconsistency. When tone changes, terminology drifts, and structure varies across modules, your work stops feeling recognizable and trustworthy even if the content is technically correct. We walk through a simple fix that doesn’t r...

Curiosity turns into clarity when a seasoned teacher names the practices that work. Jackie sits down with Caroline Amberson, a K–12 demonstration teacher who completed her M.S. in Instructional Design at Grand Canyon University, to unpack how research transformed instinct into intention. She walks us through the moment Mayer’s multimedia principles gave her a common language, how UDL and cognitive...

AI output isn’t mysterious; it’s measurable. When we prompt like we’re chatting, we get content that feels generic and unpredictable. When we prompt like instructional designers, with audience, outcomes, constraints, and a definition of “good,” the same AI tool starts producing drafts you can actually reuse. In this episode, Jackie walks through a simple mindset shift that changes everything: a pr...

Ever feel like your tools change faster than your lesson plans? Jackie sat down with tech translator and founder Charly Leetham to unpack a calmer, smarter way to work with technology—one that starts with first principles, respects human limits, and favors preparation over firefighting. From story-rich field experience to practical classroom routines, this conversation is a guide to making tech se...

AI can write training content that looks flawless, sounds professional, and still quietly mislead your learners. That’s the problem we tackle today, along with a practical fix you can use immediately: a fast QA scan that keeps AI speed while protecting trust, accuracy, and credibility. In this episode, Jackie walks through three failure modes that show up again and again in AI-generated eLearning...

What if the clearest path to your calling is simpler than you think? Host Jackie Pelegrin sits down with artist, pastor, author, and motivator Daniel Bernabe for a candid look at how grief, faith, and relentless practice can turn raw potential into enduring impact. From a teenage moment of loss to the steady drumbeat of “seek first,” Daniel charts the habits and heart postures that helped him beco...

AI can crank out a draft in minutes, but if the audience is wrong, the tone is off, or the facts don’t match policy, you’ll lose every “saved” hour in rework. In this episode, Jackie breaks down the shift she keeps seeing in instructional design teams: the new bottleneck isn’t creating content, it’s creating trusted content. That’s why human-in-the-loop review isn’t an extra process. It’s the diff...

What if AI became your most thoughtful co-teacher instead of a shortcut students hide behind? Jackie had an engaging and insightful conversation with John Williamson, lead curriculum developer at Grand Canyon University and founder of Olive and Rose Education, to map out how generative AI can boost creativity, deepen learning, and give teachers precious time back—without losing professional judgme...

Training can look successful on paper and still fail where it counts: on the job. We’re digging into the data literacy instructional designers and educators actually need right now, especially as AI tools speed up decisions and raise new privacy questions. If you’ve ever stared at completions, seat time, or quiz scores and wondered, “So what do I do with this information?”, this conversation is bu...

Creativity isn’t extra; it’s how we unlock potential. That’s the heartbeat of this conversation with Austrian‑Californian multimedia artist and creativity awareness educator Michaell Magrusche, whose neurodiversity shaped a human‑centered approach to learning, design, and life. We talk candidly about why people must come before systems, how to balance money, meaning, and voice in design, and the s...

AI isn’t just a time-saver anymore, it’s a trusted choice. When instructional designers paste the wrong thing into the wrong tool, the risk isn’t abstract: it can touch learner privacy, employee data, internal documents, proprietary processes, and even regulated content. In this episode, Jackie shares a simple way to stop guessing and start using AI with calm, clear guardrails you can actually fol...

Ever wondered how a teacher’s instincts translate into real business value? We sit down with Jessica Smith, a former secondary Spanish teacher turned corporate instructional designer at ADP, to unpack the exact moves that make the leap from education to L&D not just possible, but powerful. From scoping with SMEs to beating scope creep, Jessica shows how to define clear performance outcomes, au...

AI can generate outlines, quizzes, and scripts in minutes, but that doesn’t mean your learners will do the right thing on Monday. We zoom out to see what AI is really changing in instructional design and what remains stubbornly, beautifully human: context, empathy, trust, and accountability for results. I walk through the pressure many of us are feeling as stakeholders start to assume “content equ...