Designing with Love
What does it take to design learning experiences that truly work? Join Jackie Pelegrin, award-winning instructional designer and Grand Canyon University (GCU) adjunct instructor, as she explores instructional design, e-learning, and AI integration. Expect actionable tips, real-world insights, and conversations with students, alumni, and industry leaders shaping the future of learning.
Episodes
131 episodes
Accessibility as a Habit, Not a Hurdle With Maxwell Ivey
Accessibility doesn’t have to feel like a mountain you climb alone. Jackie sat down with accessibility advocate Maxwell Ivey to turn big ideas into small, repeatable steps that make your website and content welcoming to every user. Instead of c...
Your 90-Day AI-Ready Plan: Skills, Systems, and Proof
AI tools are getting faster, louder, and harder to ignore, but that doesn’t mean your growth has to feel chaotic. We wrap the AI-Ready Designer Series with a clear 90-day plan that turns experimentation into a repeatable practice you can actual...
Magnetic Talks That Move People With Dr. Danny Brassell
What if your best presentation didn’t just earn applause—it moved people to act? Jackie sat down with Dr. Danny Brassell to map a clearer path from inspiration to conversion, blending hard-won classroom lessons with decades on the stage to show...
Measuring AI's Impact on the L&D Team
AI can make instructional design feel faster overnight, but speed is the easiest thing to celebrate and the easiest thing to misunderstand. When leaders ask whether AI is truly helping learning and development teams, “We used it a lot” is not a...
Writing That Sticks: Using ARCS With Ruth Douthitt
Ever watch a promising writing class lose steam by midterm? We’ve been there, and we built this conversation to flip that script using the ARCS model—Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction—as a practical blueprint for motivated, higher-...
Working With IT, Security, and Procurement: The New Collaboration Trio
AI tools can make learning design faster and more creative, but the moment a tool touches prompts, uploads, learner responses, employee information, or system integrations, approvals can feel like a hard stop. We talk through the real shift man...
Accessibility Is a Competitive Edge With Maxwell Ivey
Accessibility isn’t a box to tick at launch; it’s the backbone of products people actually trust. Jackie sat down with Maxwell “The Blind Blogger” Ivey—founder of The Accessibility Advantage and longtime advocate for inclusive digital ...
AI Tutors, Coaches, and Practice Bots: When They Help and When They Don't
A bot can sound warm, responsive, and confident, and still teach the wrong thing. That’s the tension we dig into as we explore AI tutors, AI coaches, and practice bots through the lens that matters most to instructional designers: practice desi...
Designing Learning That Actually Changes Behavior With Dr. Steven Linley
Training that doesn’t change behavior is just content, and content alone won’t move a business metric. Jackie sat down with Dr. Steven Linley, a learning strategist and adult learning expert, to unpack how to turn “we need training” into perfor...
From Content Creator to Learning Architect: The AI-Era Shift
AI can generate outlines, scripts, quizzes, scenarios, and slide drafts in minutes. That sounds like freedom, until you realize the real danger is volume: more content, more assets, more “resources” that don’t actually change what learners do. ...
Assess What Matters In An AI World With Hamza Sami
What if assessment made thinking visible and turned AI into a learning partner instead of a shortcut? Jackie sat down with Hamza Sami to close our series by unpacking practical ways to design for real understanding—where reasoning, judgment, an...
Your ID Knowledge Vault: How to Stay Consistent When AI Is Fast
AI can help you generate course content in minutes, but if you’ve ever looked at the output and thought, “This doesn’t sound like me,” you already know the hidden cost: inconsistency. When tone changes, terminology drifts, and structure varies ...
Navigating the Journey: Caroline Amberson's Transformation Through Instructional Design
Curiosity turns into clarity when a seasoned teacher names the practices that work. Jackie sits down with Caroline Amberson, a K–12 demonstration teacher who completed her M.S. in Instructional Design at Grand Canyon University, to unpack how r...
Prompting as a Design Skill: From “Try This” to Repeatable Patterns
AI output isn’t mysterious; it’s measurable. When we prompt like we’re chatting, we get content that feels generic and unpredictable. When we prompt like instructional designers, with audience, outcomes, constraints, and a definition of “good,”...
Design for People, Not Just Features With Charly Leetham
Ever feel like your tools change faster than your lesson plans? Jackie sat down with tech translator and founder Charly Leetham to unpack a calmer, smarter way to work with technology—one that starts with first principles, respects human limits...
AI Quality Assurance: Catching Hallucinations, Bias, and Brand Drift
AI can write training content that looks flawless, sounds professional, and still quietly mislead your learners. That’s the problem we tackle today, along with a practical fix you can use immediately: a fast QA scan that keeps AI speed while pr...
Claim Your Calling With Daniel Bernabe
What if the clearest path to your calling is simpler than you think? Host Jackie Pelegrin sits down with artist, pastor, author, and motivator Daniel Bernabe for a candid look at how grief, faith, and relentless practice can turn raw potential ...
Human-in-the-Loop: The Review Workflow That Prevents Rework
AI can crank out a draft in minutes, but if the audience is wrong, the tone is off, or the facts don’t match policy, you’ll lose every “saved” hour in rework. In this episode, Jackie breaks down the shift she keeps seeing in instructional desig...
Practical AI Strategies for K-12 and Higher Ed With John Williamson
What if AI became your most thoughtful co-teacher instead of a shortcut students hide behind? Jackie had an engaging and insightful conversation with John Williamson, lead curriculum developer at Grand Canyon University and founder of Olive and...
Data Literacy for IDs: The Basics You Need to Work Smarter With AI
Training can look successful on paper and still fail where it counts: on the job. We’re digging into the data literacy instructional designers and educators actually need right now, especially as AI tools speed up decisions and raise new privac...
Creativity Over Compliance With Michaell Magrutsche
Creativity isn’t extra; it’s how we unlock potential. That’s the heartbeat of this conversation with Austrian‑Californian multimedia artist and creativity awareness educator Michaell Magrusche, whose neurodiversity shaped a human‑centered appro...
AI Guardrails 101: Policies and Permissions
AI isn’t just a time-saver anymore, it’s a trusted choice. When instructional designers paste the wrong thing into the wrong tool, the risk isn’t abstract: it can touch learner privacy, employee data, internal documents, proprietary processes, ...
From Classroom to Corporate Learning With Jessica Smith
Ever wondered how a teacher’s instincts translate into real business value? We sit down with Jessica Smith, a former secondary Spanish teacher turned corporate instructional designer at ADP, to unpack the exact moves that make the leap from edu...
The New Instructional Designer: What AI Changes and What It Doesn’t
AI can generate outlines, quizzes, and scripts in minutes, but that doesn’t mean your learners will do the right thing on Monday. We zoom out to see what AI is really changing in instructional design and what remains stubbornly, beautifully hum...
Autonomy That Actually Works With Hamza Sami
Autonomy isn’t about handing learners the wheel and hoping for the best. We explore how freedom becomes fuel—when it’s matched to the stakes, the setting, and the supports. With guest Hamza Sami, we compare college courses where risk is a learn...
