Hi, I'm Xandra Daniels, an Instructional Designer located in Raleigh, NC.

 My career has taken me to many interesting places and has had a couple of twists and turns. After completing my BA in Anthropology in 2008, I started my career as an archaeologist in the Pacific Northwest. I decided to pursue a Masters degree to further that career and that decision took me to Raleigh NC to North Carolina State University. After receiving my MA in Anthropology in 2013, I fell into adjunct teaching at a local Raleigh university. I found that I loved teaching and found a second professional passion for instruction, educational theory and working with adult learners. I was promoted to a full time Assistant Professor at William Peace University and started to focus all my professional development and committee work required by the position on learning how to teach and helping my colleagues develop their teaching skills as well. I fell in love with instructional theory and found that my interest in science, data gathering and analysis, and teaching combine into a really useful trifecta.  After being a professor for 8 years, the COVID-19 pandemic led to another twist in my career path and in 2021, I decided to take this trifecta of experience to the field of instructional design.

I use a combination of instructional design processes to create engaging and accessible learning experiences.

Begin at the End.

I typically begin at the end using a Backwards Design approach. What should the learner change about their skills, their knowledge or their behavior? What is the end goal of the training session or learning experience? If I know where our learners need to end up I can build the steps in the path to get them there. 

Key Performance Indicators

Training happens because of a deficit. The next important piece of information in creating training is knowing which KPIs are identified as needing improvement. This determination is important for several reasons but the most important is that there has to be link between the end goal discussed above and the KPI needing to be impacted. Efficiency is key and training on a knowledge gap that will not improve a business KPI will ultimately end in wasted time and money.

Measurable Design. Engaging Development.

The two points above are part of the Analysis portion of the ADDIE process. Once the end goal and the KPI are aligned appropriately, then it's time to Design and Development. Design includes creating learning objectives necessary to achieve the end goal. Part of creating learning objectives is creating the assessment questions to determine if those learning objectives have been achieved. This creates a measurable design where I will be able to ascertain with data if the objectives have been met. 

Development is the creation of the content that will help the learner be able to successfully learn the content and confidently complete the assessment. For every learning objective there is an appropriate instructional plan. I regularly create in person, virtual, eLearning, digital, and analog training materials. There is not a one size fits all solution. My personal passion is in creating eLearning, it's flexible, accessible, consistent and modern. I love incorporating gamification, video, scenario interactions, and any opportunity possible for reflection and application of information. I would rather have a learner choose how they engage with and  ingest information rather than just tell them information.

Implementation and Evaluation

Implementation is the most exciting part of the process. Watching facilitators provide instruction, seeing learners engage with the content and then observing the effectiveness of the content through data analysis is always a thrilling part of the process. This part speaks to my science background, it is the experimentation and analysis portion of the scientific method applied to an instructional design context. I regularly train the trainers on the content I create and coach facilitators on their in classroom instruction as needed. I currently use a method of assessment that includes a pre-assessment, post-assessment and then a transfer assessment given about 30 days after training. These three points of assessment allow us to see what the learner already knows before training, what they've improved on or learned during training, and how much they've lost, retained or applied after training. It also allows for targeted review of content and instruction. If the learners have high scores on the pre-assessment, then the content is probably redundant to the learner and we should re-analyze the training gaps and plan. If the scores are low at the post-assessment, the content or instruction isn't serving the learning objectives and needs to be redesigned or redeveloped.  If the scores are low at the transfer assessment, the material isn't being applied or reinforced in the day to day work of the learner. This process allows for targeted, efficient review of training content, instruction and application.