Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

The past few days I’ve had the pleasure of attending the Sixth Annual St. Louis Cabaret Conference, a wonderful gathering where singers work with world-class performers to develop the art of cabaret performance.  Cabaret artists Andrea Marcovicci and Jason Graae along with musical directors Shelly Markham and Rik Jenson were on hand to train us in the myriad skills required to create a successful show.  It was really good to find myself in the role of the student again, a situation that happens for many of us all too rarely.  But learning is hard, and as I observed these master teachers work with each student, it was so clear how vital interaction is.  As designers of instruction, it is a danger that the routine of generating training programs can lull us into a state of complacency.  The choices we as creators of training materials make determines how challenging, exciting, and even life-changing learning can be, or how scary, off-putting, or dismissive the experience can be through the eyes of the learner.  To be good teachers, we need to be learning continually.

In this spirit of learning, I’m happy to take this opportunity to introduce several new contributors to this blog.  I’m going to continue to be posting entries about e-learning design perspectives as I have for some time, but my colleagues from the Allen Interactions Tampa studio, Dr. Richard Sites, Deanna Sedivy, Jay Bravo and Angel Green, will periodically be adding their voices and ideas about designing engaging e-learning, managing successful projects and creating effective courseware.

Drawing on his extensive experience working with clients, Richard Sites designed and developed project documents which we use to assist clients in understanding how our processes and strategies can ensure project success. In addition to managing our Tampa team, Richard works with our other studios on ways we can continue to provide high value to our clients.

Deanna Sedivy, our studio producer, has been managing e-learning and creative development projects for last decade. As someone who is driven by deadlines and milestones, she will be contributing her thoughts on effective strategies to manage successful projects.

Jay Bravo, the senior development specialist, works on making e-learning design come alive through creative courseware development. His artistic ability coupled with his technical skills will offer unique insights into the strategies for the development of effective courseware.

Angel Green, our instructional strategist, has written and developed both instructor-led training and e-learning. Her experience ranges from competency mapping, skill gap analysis, curriculum development, and training facilitation. Angel will provide her observations of putting the Allen instructional design principles into action.

You can expect a post from Richard in the next few days. I look forward to learning from all of their blog posts and I hope you will too.