Learning

Facilitating an online workshop

Running a really engaging online workshop takes planning. You need to be clear on the distinction between presentation and learning facilitation.

Conference Sessions and Seminars

The conference of my dreams

Learning and development has some truly exciting related fields: evaluation, behavioural science, animation, videography, teaching, advertising, sales — the list goes on.

Learning

What is ‘learning design’?

I see learning design as sitting in the midst of a range of allied skillsets and jobs: learning science, cognitive science, neuropsychology, user experience design, design thinking…

Learning consultancy

Ethics of learning design

“What makes teaching a moral endeavor is that it is, quite centrally, human action undertaken in regard to other human beings. Thus, matters of what is fair, right, just, and virtuous are always present.” Fenstermacher, G. D. (1990).

Literature and film

Ways in Which Howl’s Moving Castle Is Like a Kaleidoscope

Halfway through the book, the author turns the idea on its head…

Literature and film

Tribute to Maurice Gee

We spent quite some time trying to find examples of such books where a character dies, without the book being specifically a problem book about the protagonist dealing with death, because it wasn’t as common as I’d first thought.

Learning

NZATD 2025: When to test e-learning

I like to run my user testing at the same time as the stakeholder review. Not just to cut down the number of iterations, but for another reason.

Learning Featured

NZATD 2025: How to test e-learning before launch

We need both these types of evaluation during our design and development process, if we want to deliver resources that actually teach the learners what we are trying to teach.

Learning

Establishing context

When people ask me to design a learning intervention, they often already have a solution in mind. It’s generally a fairly simple one: a workshop or an e-learning module. Sometimes they ask for blended learning, but if so, it is usually one particular format: an e-learning module followed by

Learning

NZATD professional membership

Every part of this process was worth it for me.

Learning Featured

Creative solutions and feedback

My most creative work is usually the result of unusually challenging sets of constraints. It’s digging in, and really understanding all the requirements, that make space to come up with something unique.

Art

Procreate

Procreate reminds me of using oil paint in that it does exactly what I think it will do.

Literature and film

Dangerous Spaces and Labyrinth

In both works, a girl is drawn by a charismatic male figure into a fantasy world where she has experiences that symbolise her real-world wants…

Literature and film

Power and class in the Chrestomanci series

In Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones (1977), we see a young boy with magical powers going to live in a castle, where he will be taught how to use his magic. (Before assuming this is a knockoff of any other children’s fantasy, it is important to note that

Accessibility Featured

Accessibility Toolkit

In late 2023, I was at a workshop with other learning designers, and we were discussing accessibility. Of our group of six professionals, only two of us felt confident we knew where to start. So I wrote an introductory guide.

Learning

NZATD 2025: Technology to support engagement in workshops

What I’m writing about here is the format we used for the session, which was a bit of an experiment around using AI to drive engagement in a live session.

Conference Sessions and Seminars

NZATD 2025: Miranda Verswijvelen

My key takeaways: Let learners feel something. Let them make decisions that matter. Let go of the idea that there’s always one right path. And look up Miranda’s Story Avocado and tools for writing dialogue and choices in more detail.

Conference Sessions and Seminars

NZATD 2025: Natalia Wi

One thing that really impressed me about Natalia’s session was how she provided not only a clear explanation but also a demonstration of how good practice looks in action.

Conference Sessions and Seminars

NZATD 2025: Geoff Ngataierua and Angela Page

A reminder that if we want to include te ao Māori concepts in our work meaningfully, without just using them as window dressing, we need to take the time to think hard about what we are trying to achieve, and what the concepts mean in Māori, rather than what the translations mean in English.

Conference Sessions and Seminars

NZATD 2025: Jane Bozarth’s keynote

We are not training nurses so that nurses will have more success in the abstract; we are trying to help patients. We are not training long-distance drivers so that they alone will be safer; we are helping to protect everyone on the road.

Learning

NZATD 2025: Dan Te Whenua Walker and John Faisandier

Dan’s story highlighted for me the degree to which the learners we are trying to connect with are human beings with much richer stories and their own personal motivations. John Faisandier’s session was about how to help and empathise with people when we don’t know what is going on for them.

Literature and film

Echoes of Tolkien in Dalemark

In Dalemark, Diana Wynne Jones has taken Tolkien’s ideas about linguistics and the use of fictional found artifacts as ‘sources’ for his work, and she has tried to improve on them.

Literature and film

The Undying in Diana Wynne Jones’s Dalemark series

The way magic works in Diana Wynne Jones’s Dalemark series is interesting, and the natures of the magicians are even more so. In this post I’m going to look at how Jones uses the magic system she develops in the series to craft a statement about the value of writing.

Learning

Using empathy mapping to improve learner engagement

Once I have created an empathy map, I take the learning objectives that have been agreed for the project, and I use the pains and gains as a lens to improve the activities I'm planning.

Learning

Subject matter experts, survivorship bias and learning design

If the only people to make it to SME level are the ones who throw themselves in and have excellent knowledge retention, and they are rare, then even if the SMEs have an excellent understanding of the types of learner they were in the past, they will naturally fail to connect.