I serve as the Sr. Manager for the Active Learning division of Cognella, a San Diego-based publishing company. In addition to managing our editorial team, I work directly with authors to design eLearning activities, primarily for use in higher education courses.
Like many designers, I happened upon online learning. My high school had few advanced study courses, so I took two of the state’s first online AP courses. In college internships, there was a need for better asynchronous training materials. My first career jobs were in higher education training (event coordination for UC Santa Barbara’s Career Services and then admin support for the HR Training department). I found a gem of a graduate program that allowed me to teach solo in Writing and Literature, work with the curriculum committee as a TA advisor, and concurrently finish an advanced certificate in community college teaching, which was my first real experience designing and teaching face to face courses with an online component. Gratefully, I was accepted into an internship program for teaching at a local community college, which afforded my first experience with instruction in a fully online course. From there, I moved into publishing and working with instructors everywhere!
I want to say outside of my work, but truthfully life informs design, so I may just say: parallel to my work, I have two little ones at home, a black lab mix, a stack of fiction (recent reads: Freshwater, Daisy Jones and the Six, Sourdough: Or, Lois and Her Adventures in the Underground Market, and The Windup Girl), and a too-often indulged sweet tooth.
I created this website as part of a course for Instructional Designers on connecting faculty with resources for teaching, but am looking forward to using it to connect with teachers and designers to learn as well.
design | teach | reflect 