eLearning Course: Mindful Mindset

Tools used in Development: Articulate Rise 360, Adobe Illustrator

Time in Development: 1 week

Client: The Healing Cup

Collaborators: Dr. Rima Thapar MD

Background: I designed this course for new Healing Cup clients who purchased a 6 week program to develop the skills of managing chronic pain. This is the first of four courses in the program. Clients also participated in an online community and weekly group cohort sessions facilitated by Healing Cup CEO, Dr. Thapar. I designed most of the graphics in the course using Adobe Illustrator.

We Are All Connected

An instructor-led training for new secondary art educators

Tools used in Development: Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Word, Google Suite

Time in Development: about 2 weeks

Client: Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District

Collaborators: Cindy Brown (Head of Secondary Education), Art Department Leadership

Background: As funding for the arts came back to the district, new art teachers were being hired at a rapid rate. Due to the budget constraints, these teachers taught hundreds of students at multiple schools every week and had very little time for prep or professional development. We started seeing a high turnover rate as teachers did not have the training or support they needed to effectively do their jobs. They were feeling burnt out and overwhelmed. After conducting a needs analysis and observing, I saw that there was need for more support such as more prep time and materials which I collaborated with administrators to provide. The new teachers also expressed a need for lesson design support and classroom facilitation techniques.

Solution: I designed an instructor led training where participants were led through an inquiry-based art lesson and created an original work of art. At the end, they designed their own art lesson based on a topic of their choice using engaging lesson design techniques they had learned. They got peer feedback along the way and received a job aid booklet of simple lessons to bring into their classrooms right away. The training also demonstrated best practices for classroom facilitation and teachers participated in role-play activities to put their learnings into action right away.

Results: The teachers really enjoyed the training. The feedback showed that they found the entire experience very engaging and loved being able to participate and use their new knowledge right away. They also really appreciated the job aid booklet of inquiry-based lesson ideas and mentioned that it had inspired a lot of new ideas for their curriculum development. After the first session, I did revise the training by breaking it up into 2 separate sessions as there was some feedback stating that it felt like too much information to be absorbed fully in only one day. The district saw a 60% decrease in the turnover rate of new art instructors after running these periodic trainings and providing more support and materials.

Training Materials: