January 2019

Truth be told … until I started working on our projects to design educational supports for adult basic skills education, I don’t think “empathy” for the learner played a huge part in my design decisions. Sure, I thought of the learners, but more as some set of characteristics and/or demographic data. From what I see […]

Despite being eclipsed by Notre Dame tonight (see what I did there), my favorite school gave fans a unique chance to cheer on the hockey team at the United Center here in Chicago. #GoBadgers #OnWisconsin

Purpose. Truth be told, I think it’s what we’re all striving to find and achieve. In setting a course in life, we often conflate purpose with passion, but purpose is the selfless and external-facing iteration of passion. Purpose involves capitalizing on your talents and passions for a reason beyond yourself. Tonight, we watched Dumplin on Netflix.

In the course I’m teaching, one of the optional texts students can choose is Rogers (2004) “Diffusion of innovations”. I first read this book in my master’s program at Indiana University (IU), and it put into words (and importantly … through research) what I’d experienced countless times in my professional life. Time, users/stakeholders, competing priorities, etc. all

I spend a lot of time contemplating the need that drives our work at Designers for Learning. It’s challenging to get the right mix of relevant statistics to frame the problem/need, empathy to share the human cost/importance, while avoiding condescension (e.g., labeling/deeming other humans as being “less than”). So, here’s today’s latest attempt. I’ve probably

Designers for Learning is a proud member of the Chicago Literacy Alliance (CLA), a coalition of over 130 nonprofits dedicated toward a mission of a 100% literate Chicago. The CLA’s Literacenter, a 27,000 sqft co-working space, is Designers for Learning’s “home office” and my home away from home. I took this picture today at the

Over the years, Designers for Learning’s database of contacts with a valid email has grown to around 5,500 people. Given our high percentage of college students, we lose quite a few at the end of semesters when students graduate and their .edu emails are retired, but the new enrollment each new term tends to even things

The 2019 AECT Convention Call for Proposals deadline is creeping up on February 18th, and Designers for Learning participants will be submitting at least 4 (but maybe 6?) submissions related to our work. Today, I aggregated the session topics in a master Google Doc and tomorrow I’ll send it out to the roster of presenters

Today, my pal and I presented at an Adult Education In-Service day. We shared our thoughts on “Integrating Technology into Instruction—Realistic Strategies for the Adult Education Classroom”. We’ve given versions of this session several times over the past six months. Early in our session, we talk about the fact that over 80% of middle-skills jobs (i.e.,