What if a fifth grader could turn a pile of ideas into a clear, grounded paragraph—every time—without leaning on AI? We bring back dyslexia researcher Russell Van Brocklen for part three of our series to show exactly how: start with a hero, a universal theme, and a villain; distill three good reasons into one-word themes; and anchor everything to a real quote. The result is a body paragraph that’s honest, teachable, and repeatable—plus a writing process students can explain step by step.

We also address integrity in the AI era: students must show their process or redo the work, then later use AI as a research coach rather than a shortcut. By the end, you’ll have a clear path to scale from one body paragraph to three, then add a thesis and conclusion that help students pass state tests and feel proud of their writing.

If this helped, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review. Grab the free resources in the notes, and stay tuned for part four, where we break down concrete, classroom-ready examples.

🔗 Website and Social Links:

Please visit Russell’s website and social media links below.

Russell Van Brocklen’s Website

Russell’s Facebook Page

Russell’s Instagram Page

Russell’s LinkedIn Page

Russell’s YouTube Channel

🆓Free Resource: The 3 Reasons Your Child’s Dyslexia Education Isn’t Working – And How to Fix It 

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Forget the headset hype: real learning impact starts with a clear problem, a focused outcome, and a modality that actually fits the job. We dig into how to choose between VR for safe practice, AR for in-the-flow guidance, and MR for complex 3D collaboration—then show exactly how to design the actions, decisions, and feedback loops that change behavior on the job. No fluff, no jargon, just a practical roadmap for building immersive experiences that matter.

If you’ve been looking for a practical playbook to design with purpose, not pixels, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a quick review to tell us your top takeaway—and which modality you’re testing next.

🔗 Resources and Related Episodes:

If you’d like to explore today’s topic further, here are a few resources to check out:

📝 Interactive Resource

Immersive Modality Navigator: Explore a short, self-paced course that walks you through four key steps, making sure to choose the right modality, designing meaningful interactions without overwhelming learners, and planning how you’ll measure impact and pilot your first immersive experience.

📊 Research Report

AR | VR | MR | XR | Metaverse | Spatial Computing Industry Statistics Report 2025: This report, compiled by Horacio Torrendell, the founder and CEO at Treeview, shows how the spatial computing industry is experiencing strong growth across multiple market segments. 

🎧 Listen Next: Related Episodes

Episode 28: What is Cognitive Load and Why is it Important?: A practical guide to Cognitive Load Theory and why it matters in instructional design, with tips for managing mental effort so learners can focus on what truly counts.

Episode 44: Designing for Everyone: A Guide to Universal Design for Learning: An introduction to UDL principles and how to design from the start with variability in mind, so more learners can access and engage with your experiences.

Episode 65: Accessibility in Action: Inclusive Design for Every Learner: Practical strategies for designing with accessibility at the forefront—fr

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👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!

Want to design learning that actually sticks—and gets you hired? Jackie sits down with Connie Malamed, publisher of The eLearning Coach website and podcast, author of Visual Design Solutions and Visual Language for Designers, to unpack how newcomers can skip the noise, master the essentials, and build a portfolio that proves real instructional design skill. We dive into the mindset shift from “make e‑learning” to “design for how people learn,” then get tactical: reducing cognitive load with white space and alignment, using dual coding without redundancy, and making accessibility a default through color contrast and non‑color cues.

Whether you’re transitioning from K‑12 or pivoting into corporate learning, this conversation gives you a focused path: design with empathy, keep visuals purposeful, and ship polished work that respects learners’ time. If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so others can find the show. What’s one change you’ll make in your next project?

📢 Call-to-Action: 

• Get The eLearning Coach free monthly newsletter: The eLearning Coach Newsletter
• Learn how to elevate your visibility with a free 8-lesson crash course sent by email: Free 8-Lesson Crash Course
• Learn about having a career in instructional design with a free 12-lesson course about the career: Breaking Into Instructional Design
• Join a eLearning community with 15+ courses on instructional design topics and media: Mastering Instructional Design

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👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!

Projects stall when one expert carries the content, decisions, and approvals. We flip that script with a clear, usable playbook for building a stakeholder highway—bringing sponsors, learners, frontline leaders, operations, tech, and compliance into the right moments so training actually lands in the real world. You’ll hear why SME-only pathways create bottlenecks and blind spots, how to map the roles that matter, and when to loop each voice in across discovery, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.

Roadblocks happen: the ghost SME, conflicting leader feedback, or last-minute compliance asks. Jackie shares practical responses, from clarifying who decides versus who advises to offering trade-off options that protect timelines without sacrificing quality. A quick scenario shows the reset in action—expanding beyond one overbooked SME to include a frontline manager, operations, tech, and a learner pilot—so the course is accurate, feasible, and ready for day one performance. Close with one task: sketch a one-page stakeholder highway for your next project, add two new partners, and watch momentum return. If this approach helps you, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a review so more designers can build learning that sticks.

🔗 Episode Links:

Please check out the resources mentioned in the episode. Enjoy!

Ask a Trainer: Time Slade on Working With Difficult Stakeholders and Subject Matter Experts

Stakeholder Highway Checklist

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👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!

What if your classroom could adapt to each learner without handing their data to the cloud? That’s the promise we dig into with technologist and founder Sebastien Fenelon, whose journey from scarce resources in Haiti to building privacy-first, edge AI tools reframes what “future-ready” really means for educators and instructional designers.

We start with the power of resilience—how self-taught coding, late-night study sessions, and community support can outpace limited infrastructure—and move into practical strategies for teaching code with clarity and context. Sebastien shares why AI should compress project timelines, not critical thinking, and offers a simple “100-hour” ramp to acquire new languages fast. From K–12 to higher ed, we outline how to design small, visible wins that build confidence while using AI to scaffold learning rather than replace it.

We close with a playbook for staying adaptable: keep learning in focused sprints, plug into communities that share what works, and seek mentors who reveal the path behind the skills. If you’re ready to personalize learning, protect student data, and keep your curriculum uniquely yours, this conversation offers a clear blueprint. If it resonates, follow and share with a colleague, and leave a quick review to help more educators find thoughtful, practical guidance on AI in the classroom.

🔗 Website and Social Links:

Please visit Sebastien Fenelon’s website and social media links below.

Sebastien Fenelon’s Website

Sebastien’s Facebook Page

Sebastien’s Instagram Page

Sebastien’s LinkedIn Page

📢 Call-to-Action: If you’d like to dive deeper, be sure to visit the InthraOS homepage. There, you’ll find resources, guides, and a newsletter that will keep you ahead of the curve on AI and privacy-first technology. It’s a great way to gain practical insights, connect with a growing community, and explore products you can start using right away. 

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👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!

Short doesn’t automatically mean effective. We dig into the craft of microlearning that actually changes behavior on the job, moving past buzzwords to a clear blueprint you can use this week. You’ll hear the green‑yellow‑red fit test, a tight scoping method, and five delivery patterns that make small learning moments do real work without bloating your course catalog.

Ready to ship something meaningful in seven days? Try the micro sprint, share your results, and help a teammate build their first win. If this conversation sparked ideas, follow the show, leave a review, and pass it to a colleague who’s drowning in long courses and craving lean learning that sticks.

🔗 Episode Links:

Please check out the resources mentioned in the episode. Enjoy!

8 Secrets to Designing a Successful Microlearning Program

Microlearning Beyond the Basics Guide

📑 References:

Andriotis, N. (2025, October 2). What is microlearning: A complete guide for beginners. eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/what-is-microlearning-benefits-best-practices 

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👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!

Thunder cracked over San Cristóbal as Queen Michele told us how a retired teacher, armed with a suitcase and a stubborn sense of purpose, found her soul in Mexico and a mission for the most connected generation on earth. What followed is a story of reinvention, caregiving, and building a mindfulness curriculum that teaches middle schoolers to center before they swipe.

We unpack Generation Alpha—kids born into a 24/7 feed—whose attention is shaped by platforms that never power down. Queen shares how 52 Insights for Gen Alpha blends self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, social awareness, and conscious decision-making into a year-plus sequence that fits alongside math and reading. The anchor is disarmingly simple: 4-4-6 breathing. Inhale four, hold four, exhale six—paired with words like calm, peace, focus, while releasing anger, fear, anxiety. Students lead it. Teachers get their minutes back. Classrooms find a tone that supports learning instead of firefighting.

There’s a deeper arc, too: rewriting your personal narrative. Queen explains how stepping off the survival treadmill—and moving ego to the backseat—opened the door to work that actually heals. If you’ve ever wondered how to meet today’s students where they are, build calm into your class in 60 seconds, or bring AI into SEL without losing the human core, this conversation is your map. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs a sustainable strategy, and leave a review to support more soul-forward learning. What’s the one ritual you’ll try this week?

🔗 Website and Social Links:

Please visit Queen Michele's website and social media links below.

Queen Michele’s Website

Queen’s Facebook Page

Queen’s LinkedIn Page

Queen’s X Page

Queen’s Instagram Page

Queen’s YouTube Channel

📢 Call-to-Action: 

• View the 16-chapter blog, “My Soul’s Journey Home”
• Donate monetarily to the non-profit’s mission
• Order any of my publications that resonate 

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👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!

Want learners to finish training, remember it, and use it on the job? We walk through a no-fluff approach to gamification that starts with clear outcomes and ends with measurable behavior change. Instead of throwing points at problems, we show how to pair decision-based practice, tight feedback, and meaningful rewards to build real skill.

The heart of the episode is a practical toolkit: five common pitfalls and exactly how to flip them, plus the metrics that prove impact. We cover mastery rate, attempts to mastery, two-week retention checks, opt-in rates for competitive features, branch diversity, and decision quality. Then we map it to a real-world compliance scenario—recasting a static security course into short, branching missions with mastery badges, a mission board, and optional replays that improve outcomes. To help you start fast, we share a lightweight one-week A/B plan and the key events to instrument so you can call success with confidence.

Ready to test without a rebuild? Try the simple pilot: add a progress bar, a mastery-tied badge, and a narrative intro with role, mission, and stakes—then compare completion, time on task, and decision accuracy. If this playbook helps, subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a review so we can spotlight your results next time.

🔗 Episode Links:

Please check out the resources mentioned in the episode. Enjoy!

Gamification for Learning: Strategies and Examples

Gamification Pilot Checklist

📑 References:

Buljan, M. (2025, October 2). Gamification for Learning: Strategies and Examples. eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/gamification-for-learning-strategies-and-examples 

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👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!

Most training fails not because the storyboard is weak, but because the learning lands in an environment full of competing priorities and fuzzy signals. That’s the tough-love truth James Gilchrist brings to our mic as we unpack how people-first design—and authentic leadership—turns content into real performance. James’s winding path from actor and musician to L&D leader sharpened skills we often overlook: presence, narrative, and connection. Those talents power the “lightbulb moments” when knowledge becomes action, and they shape the way he builds programs that remove roadblocks and align teams.

If the phrase people first, tools second resonates with you, this conversation will give you the language, tactics, and confidence to design for impact and lead with clarity. Enjoy the episode, and if it sparks ideas, share it with a colleague—and leave a review so others can find us. Want more? Connect with James on LinkedIn and tell us your biggest blocker to removing obstacles for your team.

📢 Call-to-Action: I’d love to continue this conversation with you. You can connect with me directly on my personal LinkedIn profile here: James’ LinkedIn Page, where I share ideas on leadership, learning, and authenticity in the workplace. You can also follow my Lighthouse L&D Consulting LinkedIn page for updates, resources, and insights from my consulting work. 

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👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!

Ever try to squeeze a desktop course onto a phone and wonder why learners bounce? We reframe the challenge and share five essentials that make mobile learning fast, clear, and genuinely useful in the moments people actually have. From finding mobile moments to building microlearning mile markers, we walk through patterns that turn scattered minutes into meaningful progress and show why one crisp outcome per lesson is the antidote to overload.

A practical case study ties it together: a 45‑minute compliance module reborn as five six‑minute micro lessons for nurses in the field. With thumb-friendly navigation, fast media, and printable field cards, completion moved into the workday, and documentation errors dropped within a month. We close with ten evidence-backed strategies inspired by SHIFT eLearning, plus a simple five-by-five rule to keep scope sane. Grab the Glove Box Guide checklist to apply these patterns right away. If this helped you design smarter for mobile, subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a review—what will you redesign first?

🔗 Episode Links:

Please check out the resources mentioned in the episode. Enjoy!

A Comprehensive Guide to Mobile Learning Design

Glovebox Guide: Mobile Course Checklist

📑 References:

Cohen, D. (n.d.). A comprehensive guide to mobile learning design - Shift E-Learning. https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/a-comprehensive-guide-to-mobile-learning-design 

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👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!