LXD
Learning Experience Design, a multidisciplinary approach to creating effective, engaging, and enjoyable learning experiences.
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The Difference Between a Game and a Badge
Canvas has a badge feature. If I want to, I can open the settings for a course, attach a requirement to a module, and have the system hand out a small image…

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I Know a Grackle
My dad kept a bird book with a life list penciled inside the front cover. I don’t think he updated it very often. It was one of those things that surfaced years…
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The Unwavering Band of Light
Early in my career as an instructional designer, I took on a project that should have felt like meaningful work. We were building a train-the-trainer program for people who would be supporting…
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Designing for Human Judgement in AI-Powered EdTech
Part 4 of an ongoing series on vibe coding in EdTech. The first version of my course builder had a problem, and the problem was me. I’d been building a personal tool…
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The “Other” Training and Delivery Modalities
When it’s time to teach something or share information, most people default to building a presentation. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable, and it works often enough that the habit sticks. But comfortable isn’t…
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Action, Information, Rest: Cycles of Design
I keep returning to a single line from Ursula K. Le Guin that has quietly shaped how I approach both learning design and my own professional development: “When action grows unprofitable, gather…
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“Flow” in Course Design: Organic, Alternative Approaches
For most of my career I have designed courses the way I build Canvas templates, which is out of parts. My atomic design system breaks a course into atoms (colors, fonts, buttons),…

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Homegrown Learning Book (Preview)
Working as a learning designer across the Great Plains, I’ve found that conventional instructional design approaches often wither when they’re transplanted into rural and otherwise unusual contexts. That’s what started Homegrown Learning:…
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Modular Content in Instructional Design
This article has moved into Homegrown Learning, where the Go metaphor from This Is How You Lose the Time War now opens the book’s page on thinking in modules, in the Design…
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Pivot: The Learning Design Strategy Game (Preview)
What is Pivot? In fall 2024, I made Pivot, a strategy card game about learning design. Players hold a hand of design principle cards and use them to build a solution to…
