If we do not come up with a brilliant idea that might change things mid-project, we’re not fully engaged creatively.
- Megan Torrance, The Quick Guide to LLAMA: Agile Project Management for Learning
Case Examples + Solutions
Boundless Learning
Lead Learning Designer
December 2025
Case Example:
Reinforcing Quality Management Through Strategic Objective Realignment
In 2024, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) released their 2024 standards. These standards, last released in 2016, triggered a reaccreditation multi-year process. The updated educational alignment criteria that the partner program adheres to is widely noted across student-facing program documentation to foster transparency in grading and institutional alignment. When the new standards were released and reaccreditation process commenced, some areas of concern were to be addressed immediately, while others would only need to be addressed by the completion of the review and evaluation (approx. 2.5 years).
Solution:
Taking the problem step-by-step, I discussed with the program administrators where the updates would need to occur, primarily in the syllabi and the course pages. Student-facing information would need to be compliant to the standards of the accrediting body, but also informative for students to engage fully with their assessment standards and criteria. While I mapped the basic areas of concern, the syllabi were pushed to faculty for detailed realignment of course objectives and assessments. Formatting was prioritized, allowing me to push global formatting changes to a designated content services team, while revisions were finalized for courses in order of launch throughout the academic year.
The updated standards created a need for some courses to be redesigned, so substantive revision requests were packaged with each subsequent course development project for a learning designer to address. By the beginning of 2026, the partner will be fully prepared to take the updated course details and supporting documentation into its final reaccreditation review.
2024 CACREP Standards and Policies
Pearson, Pearson Online Learning Services
Lead Instructional Designer
December 2023
Case Example:
Driving Strategic Management and Support
Following the pandemic, when so many programs worldwide digitized to remain competitive, the U.S. Department of Education enacted greater oversight of online education by enforcing higher accessibility regulations and direct contact requirements. Advances in HTML had standardized responsive webpages and provided improved accessibility features, but the multimedia offerings across the program were critically outdated - unresponsive and deemed inaccessible (to a screen-reader). Students were suddenly faced with static and malfunctioning multimedia pieces throughout their experience.
Solution:
Taking the problem step-by-step, I discussed with the program administrators how more stringent accessibility standards would affect the program. Cascading effects would eventually mean significant changes to course materials storage and delivery protocols, but student-facing multimedia objects took precedent. The updates would need to focus primarily on existing multimedia pieces, but also to the protocols for new pieces built over time. While I implemented a sweeping needs assessment of the multimedia pieces, many aspects of their integration needed to be reassessed to meet the emergent standards, including: Stock Image Logs, Credits Pages, Rights and Permissions Spreadsheets - all of which reached into new realms of online learning support for me.
Methodically, over the span of 2 years, all multimedia pieces were reevaluated based on extensive, consultation-driven criteria and decidedly retired or redeveloped to meet the heightened standards. This effort also improved the way multimedia is stored and delivered, paving the way for more comprehensive learning analytics initiatives to take shape.
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Pearson
Instructional Designer
December 2021
Case Example:
Facilitating Quality and Efficiency for Program Sunsetting
As the pandemic reached its peak, a long-time university partner decided to move its instructional design efforts in-house. Since I had been working on courses for this program for a few years, I was tapped to shadow the Lead Learning Designer in the formal sunsetting of the program, tightening up course and program level documentation and preparing faculty with handoff documentation and discussions. Suddenly, my lead on the the program found a new job outside the company.
Solution:
Taking the opportunity piece-by-piece, I recognized immediately that the work would lead to an opportunity to showcase my fitness for the vacant position, but the immediate needs of the partner took precedence. I staged the curriculum plan for the final course launches, neatly organized the course folders for migration efficiency, and packaged multimedia files and other supporting documentation safely and efficiently.
Communication became key to my success. While I did not meet with the program administrators directly, I was connected to a greater network of support personnel to assist in the closing of the partnership, including: the Project Coordinators, Project Manager, Lead Content Web Specialist, and Program Director. To prove that my work as an understudy to the team leader was effective, I began to provide both course-level consultation to faculty and program-level support to internal teams. This sunsetting operation showed me both the supports for scalable growth and strategic decoupling in real-time as an effort in business sustainability.
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New England College of Business
Instructional Designer
July 2019
Case Example:
Advancing Higher Education Through Innovative Online Learning Solutions
Before the pandemic and the wave of emergency online education that followed, my learning design projects and goals were only just taking shape. This “100-year old startup” where I began my practice as an instructional designer had amassed a vast network of business partners willing to subsidize their employees’ online education for improved workplace performance and outcomes. While I learned the ropes of curriculum design and deployment, I was pulled into some extraordinary projects to test my skill: acquiring a doctoral program in the pursuit of achieving “University Status”, migrating courses, content, SMEs, and processes from acquired courses into the LMS, and as a result, building out a learning pathways ecosystem capable of leveraging all the assets collected. These early projects, and in particular building out a learning pathways ecosystem, brought to bear some the earliest discoveries that continue to inform my work today.
Solution:
With years of experience driving new and exploratory initiatives for organizations as an intern, work-study, and graduate consultant (and a few advanced degrees to show for it), I was tapped to explore the possibility of building out a learning pathways ecosystem to meet the industry demand for more equitable online education delivery models. Suddenly, I’m researching micro-credentialing organizations, partnerships, and pioneers in the space. I quickly establish a connection with the Education Design Lab to design think through some of the early stages of development. Their work developing a system of badging for “Soft” and “21st Century” skills had through lines with our departmental goals. I then arranged demonstrations from Credly, Accredible, and Portfolium to help leadership think through the possibilities. The college sent me to the Summit on the Credentialing Economy in Washington D.C. in 2018, where I met with a select group of thought leaders and forward-thinking educators, who taught me how to prioritize and support learners from perspectives I had not previously considered.
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