Designing with Love

Grades can look great while real-world readiness quietly falls apart. Jackie sat down with Rob Heller, founder of the Boost Program and author of The Missing Course for Today’s Youth, to dig into the skills schools often assume students already have and why that assumption is costing young people in relationships, mental health, and career growth.

Rob breaks down “soft skills” for what they really are: hard, learnable life skills made up of micro-skills. We talk about why teamwork, leadership, and conflict resolution don’t improve through group projects alone, and how foundational behaviors like active listening, asking better questions, nonverbal communication, integrity, and refraining from gossip create better collaboration in school and at work. If you care about instructional design, curriculum development, or social-emotional learning, you’ll hear practical strategies for turning broad traits like confidence and resilience into real learning experiences that stick.

We also tackle the biggest force shaping human connection right now: smartphones and social media. Rob shares a lesson framework for “you control your phone versus it controlling you,” including a realistic 30-day plan, journaling, and accountability check-ins so students can build healthier tech boundaries without rejecting technology entirely.

Subscribe for more conversations on teaching beyond content, share this with an educator or parent, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What life skill do you think belongs in every school schedule?

🔗 Website and Social Links

Please visit Rob Heller’s website and social media links below.

Rob Heller’s Website

Rob’s Facebook Page

Rob’s X Page

Rob’s Instagram Page

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Rob’s YouTube Channel

📢 Call-to-Action: To learn more about Rob Heller and the Boost Program, visit the Boost Program website. There, you can explore the program’s 26 essential life skills, learn how to bring Boost to a school or youth organization, and discover Rob’s book, The Missing Course for Today’s Youth. You can also connect with Rob through his social media channels for additional insights and resources on preparing young people for success in life and work. 

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In this episode, Jackie walks through what she calls Microlearning 2.0, which is a future-ready approach that treats microlearning as small, purposeful learning moments that help people understand, practice, remember, or apply something useful. We talk about why this matters for adult learners in busy workplaces and higher education, especially when someone needs help at the moment of need. Instead of replaying an entire course, a learner may only need a checklist before a difficult conversation, a quick retrieval practice prompt to reinforce a concept, or a short scenario to sharpen decision-making. 

Then, Jackie shares three practical design shifts for instructional design and training: moving from short content to focused outcomes, moving from consumption to action, and moving from isolated nuggets to connected learning pathways. You’ll leave with a simple Microlearning 2.0 check you can run on anything you’re building: Is it focused? Does the learner do something? Where does it connect in the larger learning journey? 

If this helped you think beyond short videos and quick tips, subscribe, share the episode with a fellow educator or instructional designer, and leave a review so more learning leaders can find the show.

🔗 Episode Links

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

Future-Ready Design Brief: Microlearning 2.0 

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AI can produce a polished paragraph in seconds, but that doesn’t mean students are learning to write. Jackie sat down with Michael Leggs, a college professor and the founder of Smartleby, to unpack a more useful way to think about artificial intelligence in education: not as a replacement for writers, but as a revision tutor that helps writers grow. Along the way, we dig into what “authentic voice” and academic integrity look like when AI tools are everywhere, and why writing still matters because writing is thinking.

Michael shares the story behind the Smartleby name and the design philosophy that separates it from popular AI writing tools that generate content on demand. We talk about what students actually need most in college composition and beyond: support with the full writing process, not just grammar fixes. We also wrestle with a very real classroom tension, where educators can lose hours trying to detect AI use instead of teaching. His Roadrunner analogy lands hard: chasing new detectors can create a culture of mistrust, while redesigning assignments can make learning visible again.

We also zoom in on research and digital literacy. With students drowning in information, the skill that matters is not finding sources but evaluating them. We discuss credibility checks, why Wikipedia is a fine starting point but not a final citation, and how AI-generated search results can raise the stakes for careful verification. 

Subscribe for more practical conversations on instructional design, learning, and responsible AI, and if this helped you, share it with a colleague and leave a review. What’s one change you’re making to your writing prompts or assessments this year?

🔗 Website and Social Links:

Please visit Michael Leggs’s website and social media links below.

Michael Leggs’s Website

Michael’s Facebook Page

📢 Call-to-Action: Smartleby is an AI-powered writing and revision platform created by college professor Michael Leggs. Designed to help students, educators, and writers improve their work while maintaining academic integrity, Smartleby provides intelligent feedback and revision support that strengthens critical thinking rather than replacing it. Listeners can learn more about responsible AI use in writing, explore educational resources, and discover practical tools for becoming more effective communicators. 

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

A course can feel fair and still be unfair if it forces every learner to take the same route. We’re seeing a major shift in instructional design and online education: learning experiences are moving from fixed pathways to adaptive pathways that respond to learner needs, performance, and progress. The exciting part isn’t the tech itself. It’s the chance to offer the right support at the right moment without building a separate course for every person.

We dig into what adaptive learning really means in practice, from adjusting practice and difficulty to changing feedback, resources, and next steps. Jackie shares why personalization at scale should never mean different standards, and how “personalize the pathway, not the purpose” keeps outcomes clear while giving learners flexibility. We also talk about the responsibilities that come with personalization: the data we collect, the risk of bias, and the danger of turning a temporary struggle into a permanent label that quietly narrows options.

To make this usable right away, Jackie walks through a simple design tool you can apply this week: the Adaptive Pathway Check. You’ll pinpoint where learners vary, decide what evidence should trigger support, and choose what can change while the learning goal stays the same, including when to invite human help. If you care about learner agency, equity, and keeping humans in the loop while using educational technology wisely, this conversation is for you.

Subscribe for more Future Ready Learning ideas, share this with a fellow educator or learning leader, and leave a review so more designers can find the show.

🔗 Episode Links

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

Future-Ready Design Brief: The Rise of Adaptive Pathways 

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🗣️ Want to be a guest on Designing with Love? Send Jackie Pelegrin a message on PodMatch, here: Be a guest on the show

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

Content is the easy part. The hard part is designing conditions in which people actually learn, feel safe enough to struggle, and walk away able to use what they practiced when the stakes are real. Jackie sits down with curriculum and learning experience designer Nicole Weber to discuss human-centered instructional design that goes beyond information delivery to encompass culture, connection, and belonging.

Nicole shares how living and working abroad shaped her approach to culturally responsive learning design, inclusion, and trauma-informed practices. We unpack why learning is reciprocal, how empathy mapping can go deeper than surface-level personas, and why psychological safety determines whether the brain can stay in a learning state. We also connect the dots to evaluation and behavior change, including why organizations often stop at “completion” instead of designing for transfer.

Then we tackle AI in learning and development with a clearer question than “How do we use the tool?” When answers are abundant, what becomes valuable is interpretation, judgment, reflection, and shared meaning-making. You’ll hear a practical guiding question to ask before you build anything, plus ideas for more authentic scenarios and assessments that match the ambiguity of real work.

Follow Nicole on LinkedIn, and if this conversation helps you rethink your next course, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a review so more instructional designers and educators can find it.

🔗 Website and Social Links

Please visit Nicole Weber’s website and social media links below.

Nicole Weber’s Website

Nicole’s LinkedIn Page

📢 Call-to-Action: To learn more about Nicole’s work in curriculum design, learning experience design, and human-centered learning, visit her website and connect with her on LinkedIn. Nicole says that she believes some of the most powerful learning happens through conversation and shared reflection. She welcomes opportunities to connect with educators, instructional designers, and learning leaders who are interested in creating more human-centered, inclusive, and impactful learning experiences. 

You can also reflect on today’s conversation by asking yourself: Am I designing only for content completion, or am I creating space for culture, curiosity, connection, and meaningful learning? 

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☕ Buy Me a Coffee is another way you can support the show, either as a one-time gift or through a monthly subscription. 

🗣️ Want to be a guest on Designing with Love? Send Jackie Pelegrin a message on PodMatch, here: Be a guest on the show

🌐 Check out the show's website here: Designing with Love

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

Technology can personalize learning, automate tasks, and deliver faster feedback, but it can also leave learners confused, overwhelmed, and tired. We dig into a simple question every instructional designer and educator needs to ask right now: what does the learning experience actually feel like for the learner?

We build on the Future Ready Learning series with a human-centered approach to edtech, AI in education, and learning experience design. Instead of starting with shiny features, we start with learner needs and then decide whether a tool truly belongs in the solution. We also talk about the hidden cost of “more platforms”: every extra login, notification, and interface adds friction that steals attention from learning.

You’ll hear three practical shifts you can apply immediately: start with the learner instead of the tool, automate with intention while protecting human moments like coaching and meaningful feedback, and use technology to reduce friction rather than add complexity. We also share a quick “human-centered tech check” with three questions to evaluate one tool you’re using right now, plus a final reflection that cuts through the hype: is the technology helping learners focus on learning, or forcing them to focus on the technology?

If this helps you rethink your tech stack and your teaching choices, subscribe to the podcast, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review so more learning leaders can find it.

🔗 Episode Links

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

Future-Ready Design Brief: Human-Centered Learning in a Tech-Driven World 

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AI can generate course content in minutes, but it can also produce confident nonsense, biased visuals, and nonexistent citations. We close out our mini-series with Dr. Dwayne Wood by zooming out on how quickly AI has evolved from basic text chatbots to multimodal tools that draft e-learning, images, and more, and why that speed raises the stakes for educators and instructional designers.

We break ethics down into four practical areas of concern you can use in your workflow: accuracy, privacy, intellectual property, and accountability. Dwayne shares real examples of how AI can hallucinate sources (even producing fake DOIs), distort nuance when summarizing, and quietly reinforce stereotypes depending on training data and the way prompts are written. We also dig into copyright and fair use in course development, including why “just upload the PDF” can turn into a compliance problem for you, your school, or your client.

From there, we get tactical about balancing efficiency with quality. We talk about using AI for low-risk first drafts, matching your review effort to the risk level, and keeping a human in the loop through SME validation and QA. We also cover transparency and attribution, why it matters even when AI is only used for grammar, and how disclosure changes the trust and review process. The biggest takeaway is a simple ethical stop sign: if no accountable human can explain, verify, or defend the AI-generated content, do not publish it.

If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a review so more instructional designers can use AI responsibly without losing the human responsibility at the heart of learning design.

📢 Call-to-Action: To continue learning from Dr. Dwayne Wood, visit the links in the show notes and connect with him online. And as you move forward with AI-supported content creation, remember to pause, review, and lead with ethics, transparency, and care for your learners.

📖 Additional Resource: You can also visit National University to learn more about its programs and resources for adult learners, working professionals, and military-connected students.

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💟 Designing with Love + allows you to support the show by keeping the mic on and the ideas flowing. Click on the link above to provide your support.

☕ Buy Me a Coffee is another way you can support the show, either as a one-time gift or through a monthly subscription. 

🗣️ Want to be a guest on Designing with Love? Send Jackie Pelegrin a message on PodMatch, here: Be a guest on the show

🌐 Check out the show's website here: Designing with Love

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

AI can write a quiz question in seconds, but it cannot tell you what your learners truly need or what’s ethical, accessible, and aligned. That’s the tension Jackie's unpacking as we continue the series Future Ready Learning: Designing Education for What Comes Next. If generative AI feels exciting and overwhelming at the same time, you’re not alone, and you’re not doing it wrong. The goal is not to ban AI or hand over the design process, but to use it with intention while keeping human judgment in the lead.

In this episode, Jackie walks through what changes when AI shifts from an occasional tool to a daily workflow partner for instructional designers, educators, and learning leaders. We talk about why “polished” output can still be wrong, misaligned to learning objectives, or a poor fit for your audience. Then, Jackie shares a practical design shift: move from AI as a content generator to AI as a co-design partner. That means using AI to explore options, challenge drafts, identify gaps, simplify language, and strengthen practice, not to make final decisions for you.

Subscribe for the rest of the series, share this with a colleague who’s navigating AI in education, and leave a review so more designers can find it.

🔗 Episode Links

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

Future-Ready Design Brief: AI as Your Co-Designer 

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💟 Designing with Love + allows you to support the show by keeping the mic on and the ideas flowing. Click on the link above to provide your support.

☕ Buy Me a Coffee is another way you can support the show, either as a one-time gift or through a monthly subscription. 

🗣️ Want to be a guest on Designing with Love? Send Jackie Pelegrin a message on PodMatch, here: Be a guest on the show

🌐 Check out the show's website here: Designing with Love

📱 Send a text to the show by clicking the Send Jackie a Text link above. 

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

AI can make you faster, but it can also make you lazy. That tension sits at the center of Jackie's conversation with Dr. Dwayne Wood as we bring together the big ideas from our mini-series and get practical about using generative AI for innovative instructional design.

We dig into rapid prototyping as one of the clearest wins: using AI to generate multiple starting points for activities, scenarios, and assessments so we can iterate quickly with stakeholders who are still figuring out what they want. Dwayne also shares why the first attempts often take longer, and how the payoff comes when you build prompt templates, create simple “assistants,” and set tight parameters for output format and length. If you have ever lost an hour to prompting with nothing to show for it, this will feel familiar.

From there we zoom out to the full instructional design process. We talk about using AI to analyze de-identified survey data and quiz results, identify themes, and spot learning pain points. We explore branching scenarios and personalized learning experiences that respond to learner decisions, plus “Socratic engine” scaffolding that asks questions instead of handing over answers. We also get honest about risks: hallucinations, over-trust, data privacy, and the need for guardrails in authoring tools and LMS chat features so AI augments learning outcomes rather than eroding domain knowledge.

If you want a simple experiment, we end with a concrete activity you can try this week using one objective from a course you already know. Subscribe for part five, share this with a designer friend, and leave a review so more educators can find the show.

📢 Call-to-Action: Ready to experiment with AI in your own instructional design workflow? Visit the links in the show notes to connect with Dr. Dwayne Wood, learn more about his work, and choose one small AI-supported design task to try this week.

📖 Additional Resource: You can also visit National University to learn more about its programs and resources for adult learners, working professionals, and military-connected students. 

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💟 Designing with Love + allows you to support the show by keeping the mic on and the ideas flowing. Click on the link above to provide your support.

☕ Buy Me a Coffee is another way you can support the show, either as a one-time gift or through a monthly subscription. 

🗣️ Want to be a guest on Designing with Love? Send Jackie Pelegrin a message on PodMatch, here: Be a guest on the show

🌐 Check out the show's website here: Designing with Love

📱 Send a text to the show by clicking the Send Jackie a Text link above. 

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

2027 is closer than it feels, and the future of learning is already showing up in the tools we use, the questions learners ask, and the pressure to prove real value in education and training. Jackie is kicking off a new 14-part series, Future-Ready Learning, with a practical challenge for instructional designers and educators: stop treating “the future” like a shiny tech wishlist and start designing learning that helps people grow, adapt, and apply what they know in real contexts.

We dig into three shifts that define future-ready learning design. First, we move from information delivery to skill development by building practice into the experience: problem-solving, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, ethical decision-making, digital literacy, and AI literacy. Second, we move from passive assessment to meaningful evidence of learning. In a world where AI can generate polished work fast, we need assessment strategies that show process, reasoning, choices, revision, and growth, not just a final product.

Third, we move from technology-first design to human-centered design. Tools can personalize practice, increase access, and save time, but they should never matter more than the learner. Jackie shares a simple three-question “2027 design lens” you can use immediately to check any course, lesson, training, or activity: what capability are we building, how will learners practice it, and how will we know they’re progressing? 

If you want learning experiences that stay ethical, accessible, and useful as AI reshapes the landscape, this is your starting point. Subscribe, share this with a fellow educator or designer, and leave a review so more people can design what comes next.

🔗 Episode Links

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

Future-Ready Design Brief: The 2027 Design Lens 

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💟 Designing with Love + allows you to support the show by keeping the mic on and the ideas flowing. Click on the link above to provide your support.

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🗣️ Want to be a guest on Designing with Love? Send Jackie Pelegrin a message on PodMatch, here: Be a guest on the show

🌐 Check out the show's website here: Designing with Love

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