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Successful Test-Taking Strategies is a self-paced, scenario-based tutorial to prepare technical professionals for taking certification tests at testing centers. Instruction involves online and offline activities to encourage learners to evaluate personal learning needs and habits and to adapt more constructive, proactive attitudes about and behaviors for learning. |
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This is an online, scenario-based tutorial in which the learner can explore how to manage their money and credit. Scenarios are designed to help the learner understand why they should keep their money in a bank, how to open and manage an account, and how to create a positive credit history. My work on this project was in the development of the design, instructional content and strategies, scriptwriting, and interactivity. |
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With a team of talented artists and programmers, I produced the CD title Beyond the Wall: A Living Memorial, distinguished by awards from Multimedia Producer, AV Producer's Award, and the New York Festival Gold Medal. This piece provides a framework in which a user can explore the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial from an historical, architectural, and most importantly, a human perspective to learn about the human side of war, service, and sacrifice. Beyond the Wall is leaden with digital renderings of primary source materials that include letters home from soldiers and nurses, audio recordings, home movie footage, artifacts left at the memorial and from the Library of Congress, National Archives, and National Film Archives, and documentation provided by families who lost loved ones in the Vietnam War. Read a review! |
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The Looking Glass is an interactive computer-based game designed to facilitate positive social change by providing young women with tools to cultivate their self-esteem. To explore the other side of the looking glass, the user selects a “destiny” or destination as a goal for completing a gameplay session. The path to the user's goal is punctuated by "curious" roadside attractions in which fascinating situations can develop, based on the users choices, and that include opportunities for examining constructive coping skills that involve self-evaluation and acknowledgement. |
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Rodney van Zyl and I examined how to use existing commercial game editors to create self-directed learning and the development of “conceptual tools” in the classroom. For part of our project, we used the popular commercial game The Sims , created by Electronic Arts. In The Sims, characters are programmed to behave whether the user interacts with them or not, based on the psychologist Abraham Maslow's theory of the hierarchy of human needs. The Sims' game engine allows the user to create customized characters, living spaces, and even historical landmarks, such as Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. With this virtual Monticello, we wanted to see how far we could go with The Sims' game engine to create a mod based on both its structure and social interaction. We also wanted to determine, based on research with grade school teachers, the extent to which the final product might be contextualized into a classroom setting to foster motivation, game literacy, or media dialogue. |
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The University of Virginia, Curry School of Education, Department of Instructional Technologies Website My team and I designed, managed, and produced of the university's Instructional Technologies departmental website, which went live May, 2005.
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The Color Game is a slick computer-based simulation in which sales people learn how to look for cues and clues to determine prospective needs and match them with document solution products. The "real world" learning environment includes branching customer contact scenarios portrayed face to face, via email, and on the phone, as well as a rich, interactive setting in which the user can peruse additional data to make informed decisions. My involvement with this project was in the development of the design, instructional content and strategies, scriptwriting, mock content (internet sites, online brochures, media articles), and interactivity, as well as the development of a print-based companion instructional magazine. |
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Interactive Instructional Design |
| Background |
A veteran instructional designer and distance learning specialist with over fifteen years' experience as a consultant in the creation of innovative, educational and interactive multimedia presentations for instructional, promotional, and entertainment purposes.
PhD candidate at the University of Virginia, department of Instructional Technologies, taught EDLF 700 Introduction to Instructional Technologies, EDLF 801 Advanced Instructional Design, and EDLF 703 Instructional Design for Educational Games; now with the University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
Current projects and research focus on e-learning, adult learning, virtual learning spaces, game-based learning, and facilitating the development and conversion of existing instruction to online and blended deliveries.
