Cross functional instructional design, leadership, knowledge management, and interactive instructional media ability

I enjoy applying diverse skills in my work, including graphic and multi-media design, Web and Flash development, knowledge management, information architecture, leadership and management, writing, audio/video editing, learning management systems implementation and customization, and live instruction.

I can build what I design, and effectively recruit and lead cross functional teams and projects. This is a limited selection of artifacts, so if there is something else you'd like to see, please contact me.

Additional business-relevant writing samples and ideas are located at philosophy.

• Management and recruitment of highly capable instructional media teams
  
  Game-based learning has long been a hot trend in instructional design and development, and rightly so.
  
  Game designers build engaging, entertaining products, not as a sideline, but as a mission critical activity.
  
  While engagement often gets lip service in instructional design, what if it was a top priority? This is a screenshot from an instructional game built by my team in 2007 for an external client.
  
  The game covered the objectives very effectively but more importantly, the audience enjoyed it so much, we had to limit access to prevent them from playing (learning) too much. Click for the full case study
  
  

• Creating business systems for integrated project, people, and knowledge management
  
  Production and maintenance of instructional materials is only half of the work of running an effective design and development team.
  
  Project management, and internal quality control are also critically important functions. This may not be the sexiest aspect of instructional design and development work, but poor administration can ruin productivity, quality, and morale.
  
  While running a large instructional design and development team in an agile Fortune 300 company, we integrated critical administrative functions into unified, automated project workflows minimizing overhead and administrative tedium. Click for the full case study
  
  
  
• Designing and building Web 2.0 portals for communication and learning
  
  Web 2.0 is a hot trend in instructional design and development today. I've been experimenting with Web 2.0 technologies to create learning communities since 1999. Click for the full story
  
  
  
• Creating instructional print materials, desktop publishing, Adobe InDesign
  
  While I was with ISPI-FRC, I co-created the Adobe InDesign template for The Criterion, their monthly newsletter, with my colleague and desktop publishing expert, Brian Reyman, and assembled issues for two years with my ISPI co-VPs, Dana Ewald and Patrick Lowenthal.
  
  While much of the work of instructional designer-developers has gone online lately, there is still no substitute for good print materials.
  
  Non-disclosure prevents my posting instructional manuals I have worked on here, but I have put my desktop publishing and print materials ability to work in corporate roles, in everything from 1600 page, multi-week programs, to quick handouts and worksheets. Click to read the issue
  
  
  
• Shooting and Editing Digital Video
  
  I can shoot instructional digital video and edit projects in Adobe Premiere, or other NLE tools.
  
  I designed, starred in, shot, narrated, edited, and composed the beats for this Downhill Inline Skating video lesson in 2002.
  
  I was aiming for a low-key Endless Summer, Warren Miller feel to the narration, and I was a bit self-conscious back then, so the voiceover is a bit offbeat and not typical my more recent voice work.
  
  This is a highly compressed .wmv file that will open in a new window. Allow loading time.
  
  
• Flash Development *Prototypes*, Call Center Ergonomics Courseware
  
  This draft course was taken over by another team before it was eventually released, but shows some early Flash work of mine in developing custom interactivity.
  
  This is definitely not my Flash, graphic design, and Actionscipt magnum opus, and pretty goofy looking by my currrent standards, but hopefully the creatvity and practicality of the approach comes through. If nothing else, the tools I used here were very quick to build with.
  
  There were several units in the course. The following interactions would have been interspersed throughout as capstone activities, after the usual lessons and simpler text-based interactivity.
  
  
  • Drag the green x-ray box to learn about good posture
  • Adjust Anna's posture so that she is comfortable
  • Help Dudeman (it's a draft, remember...) adjust his office furniture to prevent injury
  
  Goofy or not, I think it makes a lot more sense and results in far more realistic learning to have learners moving the arms and legs on these virtual puppets than to only ask them true/false informational questions about posture.
  
  
  
• Innovating with XML and Adobe InDesign to slash departmental operating and software costs
  
  Leading a large instructional design and development team, our budget was taking unnecessary hits from too-frequent software updates, and the cost of training complex specialist applications.
  
  Aside from Adobe's overly frequent, stockholder driven updates that should be patches (hint, Adobe) InDesign is a great tool. But if you have ever used it, it is as complex as Photoshop, and full of exotic desktop publishing jargon. It's definitely not an easy application for the masses to learn.
  
  To eliminate update and training costs, our team came up with a custom-developed system where instructional designers would write in Microsoft Word, a few more technical staff would tag documents in XML, the results were imported into InDesign, and would be finished up by specialists.
  
  Development of this system yielded 100% ROI, or over $20,000, in immediate cost savings by avoiding software updates, and continued to benefit the team and budget by cutting production time for new print materials by half, and increasing quality be keeping writers eyes on their writing, not desktop publishing.
  
  The lessons here were not that training powerful tools is always a negative, but rather that designer-developers, and especially new ones, need to focus on the essentials of design, not high-learning curve tools and, where there is a will, there is a way. Adapt and overcome.
  
  
• Writing and Critical Thinking Samples
  
  
  • E-learning and the Two Lane Brain (recent draft article)
  • Design Process Job Aid (Visio ID job aid)
    
    
  • Napoleon at Wagram (undergraduate military history)
  • Evolution of the Sherman M4 Medium Tank (undergraduate military history)
  • Albert Bierstadt, Explorer, Painter (undergraduate art history)
  
  
  
• Simple Flash Interface and Graphic Design, a very basic Flash tabbed navigation example