PHY S 100 content was originally designed for a course administered through BYU’s distance learning program several decades ago. The course was eventually added to Canvas to be used by BYU Online students, but it was never fully adapted for hundred-percent online delivery. As time passed and online learning platforms improved, the course remained unchanged, resulting in several frustrations both on the instructor and the learner parts.

The stakeholders outlined the following goals for the evaluation of content and structure redesign:

• Align the course with BYU's aims of education.
• Align the course with its in-person version.
• Create a more intuitive Canvas layout.
• Provide more hands-on experiences that would connect the learners with the real world.

This project allowed me to go through the As to Zs of the instructional design process: empathizing with the target audience, identifying the issues, prototyping, reviewing, designing for a specific LMS, which in our case was Canvas, and revising GLOs.

General Learning Outcomes

Brigham Young University aims to invite and combine spiritual values with "secular" instruction, and it was very important to me to rememeber my client's values and work on them alongside with all other goals.

Revised GLO No1

Revised GLO No2

Realigning learning goals was a seemingly small task, but as I was working on these, I realized that alignment is a lot more than corporate jargon: 1 degree difference will eventually result in a major course departure. I did my best to be extra careful with wording because these goals would be used by instructors down the road. Aims were on clarity, relevance, expectations, and real-world applicability.

Making It Easier to Learn

After thoroughly reviewing current content and previous participant feedback, we tackled the Canvas structure first because that's what seemed to create the most confusion with students. Our suggestions boiled down to the following:

New Structure Suggestion

1. Eliminate dates from the structures to reduce the number of times the dates are incorrent by accident.
2. Rechunk each lesson content to a single page.
3. Ask the TA contains a video tip from the TA and an option to submit students’ own questions.
4. Detailed study guides for each quiz. Student feedback frequently requested these.
5. A clear divider to help students understand what’s required for graded submissions.
6. Only 1 quiz per week: reduce quizzing fatigue by...
7. Substituting previous extra quizzes questions with alternative Assignments.
8. To help pursue BYU’s Aims of Education, provide prompts for a reflection that would help tie in science, life, and God’s influence, design, and plan for the students.

Branching Out

One of the stakeholder requests was to create some assignments that would increase learning outside or away from the classroom. I believe in varied levels of difficulty, depending on the task, so for one of the early modules, I designed a simple scavenger hunt activity that still used a middle-tier Bloom's cognitive domain: analysis.

Hands-on Homework Activity

This activity also includes the use of a token: a handwritten card with a student's name to encourage them to get away from the computer and explore the world.

All homework assingments were also chunked up to clearly outline required materials, intstructions, and what to submit.

Looking Ahead

As demo Canvas modules were built out, we also created a style guide for the stakeholders and future IDs that they could use for a visually cohesive learning experience. It's important to prepare the way for people who follow.

New Layout Style Guide (Study Guide, pt. 1)

New Layout Style Guide (Study Guide, pt. 2)

DIGHT 230 (Intro to Print Publishing) is a course offered by the Office of Digital Humanities at Brigham Young University. This course is required for students pursuing the Editing and Publishing major and/or a minor in Design Thinking. The course is also popular with advertising and communication-related majors, and with other design-oriented minors. Students come to learn more about graphic design principles, technical aspects of the print publishing process, and they also get a chance to work on various projects of personal interest.

Following Gronlund's Model for assessment design, the test plan was based on the following SLOs, in which at the end of the course the Student will be able to...

• Use correct industry terminology.
• Show understanding of copyfitting nuances.
• Show understanding of graphic design basics.
• Explain different aspects of the print process.
• Analyze examples to identify errors in design, production, etc.

I have taught this course for many semesters now. I created a terminology test in my first semester. There wasn’t one before, but it became clear to me by the end of that semester that students needed some kind of a formal check point on their jargon skills.When I took the assessment design course, even at the beginning of my journey as an assessment designer, it became painfully clear to me that my original test was a huge failure. It didn’t follow best practices of assessment design and it didn’t quite test what it should’ve tested in the right way.

Prof. Davies frequently reminded me that oftentimes tests aren’t actually indicative of a student’s learning journey, but mostly of their ability to take tests. With that in mind, I designed a terminology and principles understanding final exam that followed assessment best practices and learning theories in general.

Assessment Details & Comparison
	Old Test	New Test
Test Items	50	45
Points	50	90
Item Types
Multiple Choice	47	17
Supply	3	4
Alternative	0	4
Short Response	0	11
Matching	0	7
Context	0	1
Bloom's Levels
Remember	50	33
Understand	0	9
Analyze	0	3

The summary in the table above showcases how this assessment went from lackluster, click-by-click test to a more varied experience that would provide the students with different levels of cognitive load.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of this assessment is currently ongoing. Example questions are provided below.

Let me preface: this is going to be a bit of a story.

Once Upon a Time...

Okay, I'll be serious now.

The Prologue

The Letter Box Project came to life from an experience that wasn't strictly a design or education project in and of itself. It was part of the class that left learning choice up to me and my classmates, and in the end, I wrote no papers. I didn't design any apps. But I did go on a journey.

Chapter 1: The Origins

In one of the courses I was taking, titled Big Questions in Education, we were given free rein in deciding which activities would expand and enrich our personal learning. A fellow student and I had similar ideas about an activity we could suggest, both of them boiling down to writing to someone and the power of connection.

My inspiration was The Missing Post Office in Awashiyama project, where participants were given an opportunity to write a letter to anyone: their past self, a departed friend or relative, or someone living they couldn't connect to any longer. The Question for us, then, was: How do we translate this exhibit and art and longing to our experiences and connection with those around us?

Chapter 2: Not So Fast!

It was incredibly difficult to agree on several things. Not out of argument, but out of initial vagueness about what we wanted to achieve in the end. More than anything, it was extra hard to nail down what our messaging would be. What did we want our participants to do?

This is where I learned that some ideas definitely need more than a couple of weeks to develop, or value of slow, internalized design decisions that have time to percolate.

Chapter 3: Borrow Inspiration

In the end, we went back to our inspiration and borrowed from it. And we asked, What if you could write to anyone?

Chapter 4: Make It Fun!

If we're writing letters, we're sending them, even if unofficially. We decided to go all the way "postal" and ordered and assembled three mail boxes. They were placed in common areas in our department and even brought to several other classes.

One of the boxes used to collect the responses.

All responses were anonymous, and under the shield of that anonymity, we got some very heartfelt, very vulnerable notes. I have designed some postcards that would facilitate the feeling of sending a message. These postcard featured the dove, a symbol of peace, purity, love, and the Holy Ghost, all of which reflect our participants' faith values. The dove was also meant to subtly remind them that their individual experiences and aches matter.

I specifically settled on the dove with a letter, a much more elevated version of a carrier pigeon.

Chapter 5: We Have Our Treasure

We have received 60 responses, and it was quite an overwhelming experience to read them. Our participants shared some of the most special memories, thank-yous, and lingering aches, and I personally felt incredible reverence going through them.

As a group, we set out a display in the graduate lab space and invited people to join us: to step away from themselves and connect with these unknown brothers and sisters sharing this mortal time with us.

The final display for the Letter Box Project

Epilogue

The Letterbox Project is hard to explain on the page. The explanation, like the project itself, is still settling down in my mind. I have many questions. Did we approach it right? Did it accomplish what it meant to accomplish? Did we actually make anyone feel better, or did I instigate something entirely unnecessary? Etc., etc.

No matter the doubts and questions, I still know the Letter Box Project mattered to me because I went through a hard and confusing endeavor. In the moment, I had many doubts. At the end, though, glancing back, I was taught, again, that yes, design matters. Yes, planning is important. But more important than anything is doing something, anywthing with someone else. In peace, in fragile harmony, but together.

The Letter Box Project won 3rd place in the Share The Light Contest on BYU campus.

This is a small collection of graphics I've designed. Custom icons? You got it. Instructional slides? No problem. Infographics? Easy! (Sometimes.)

I use no AI in my designs. All of these have been created "from scratch" in Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and combinations thereof. I follow design principles, and aim for fun and pixel perfect.

Website mini style guide

Icon library, indie author edition

Cover design

"Gus, don't be exactly half of an 11-pound black forest ham."

InDesign Best Practice Tip, pt 1

InDesign Tutorial slide (No4 out of 7)

A 6 x 9 spread formatted in InDesign (a demo graphic for a publishing course)