The Cases
"Big Ed"
From White Glove to Self-Service: How a Community of Practice Prepared University Faculty for a Critical LMS Migration
An Instructional Design Case Study in Community of Practice Design, Higher Education Change Management, and Platform Migration Strategy
Skills Showcased: Community of practice design · Higher education change management · Systems analysis · Platform consolidation strategy · Content management strategy · Faculty development · Adjunct faculty support · SharePoint portal development
Hero Metric: Migration-ready Faculty Community of Practice delivered ahead of schedule, supporting the transition from a 20-person third-party support team to a 3-person in-house instructional design model across ~60 online courses.
The Situation
For years, Big Ed's online faculty operated within a white-glove support model: course content hosted, managed, and maintained by Pearson, with a specialist team of 10 to 20 people handling everything from content updates to technical troubleshooting. Faculty could focus entirely on teaching — the mechanics behind their courses were someone else's responsibility.
When the university decided to bring that infrastructure in-house — targeting January 2025 — the new internal instructional design team would number just three people, supporting approximately 60 online courses and their adjunct faculty. The gap was not simply technical. It was cultural.
The Solution
The Faculty Community of Practice served three audiences simultaneously:
For faculty: A centralized access point for course resources, support, and communication. Faculty were added as collaborative members with visibility into their own course materials for the first time. A structured course update process began the cultural shift from "submit a request and wait" to active participation.
For the ID team: A content management system table tracked learning objects across all ~60 courses — the operational engine that made a three-person model viable for a content portfolio previously managed by a team many times its size.
For the institution: A documented content strategy defining how the team would operate post-migration, how faculty would engage with updates, and how the organization would manage the transition to institutional content ownership.
Faculty were not mandated into adoption — they were invited into participation. The most engaged became informal champions. Others required individualized support. And a small number resisted entirely — until after the project concluded, when several reached out independently for guidance.
"Big Pharma"
From Blueprint to Launch: How a Learning Architect Built a Field Sales Onboarding Portal for a Pharmaceutical Spin-Off in Five Months
An Instructional Design Case Study in Learning Architecture, SharePoint Portal Development, and Corporate Onboarding Design
Skills Showcased: Learning architecture · Learning experience design (LXD) · Blueprint development · SharePoint learning portal development · Corporate onboarding design · Pharmaceutical sales training · Needs analysis · Curriculum analysis · Systems analysis · Multi-framework methodology (ADDIE, Design Thinking, Kirkpatrick, Gilbert's BEM)
Hero Metric: One Learning Blueprint designed, one SharePoint learning portal built and launched, and ~55 Field Sales reps and directors onboarded — by a 3-person L&D team, in five months, for a company that didn't exist at the start of the engagement.
The Situation
In February of 2021, a major pharmaceutical company, we'll call Big Pharma — officially spun off from its parent organization during a global pandemic. The new company had ambitious goals, a lean operating model, and a critical gap: no branded onboarding program for Field Sales.
The engagement began as a consulting assignment: design a comprehensive Learning Blueprint for Field Sales onboarding before the contract expired in March. The blueprint was delivered on time — and the work was strong enough that when Big Pharma completed its separation, the company extended the engagement to deliver the solution.
The Solution
The solution, a SharePoint portal featuring a welcome page with orientation video, role-specific navigation for all three Field Sales roles, a systems guide, field center support resources, structured mentor engagement, and an FAQ section for self-service support. The visual identity was modern and brand-aligned — signaling that Big Pharma was something new, not a retrofitted version of its parent.
Concurrent with portal development, the Team facilitated onboarding for new hires (who needed foundational orientation) and transfers (experienced professionals who needed to reorient to a new culture and systems without a clean slate).
The portal was published June of 2021. Read more about this case in the Insights Blog.
"Big Tech"
Scaling Technical Talent: How a Queue-Readiness Certification Program Reduced Time-to-Queue by 50%
Certification Program Design · Needs Analysis · Stakeholder Management · Kirkpatrick Evaluation · Enterprise-Scale L&D
Hero Metric: Time-to-queue reduced from 9–12 weeks to 5–6 weeks for batch cohorts of ~50 TSEs, with up to 1,200 certified annually across global locations.
The Situation
When Big Tech launched an aggressive global batch hiring initiative for Technical Support Engineers (TSEs) — highly skilled engineers supporting enterprise customers on complex cloud infrastructure — it discovered a critical gap: no one had defined what "ready" looked like. New hires completed a nine-week onboarding program but arrived on queue with inconsistent competency and no standardized readiness evidence.
The Solution
The L&D team designed a two-phase Queue-Readiness Certification Program built around three core assessments:
Case Portfolio. New hires documented cases from week six onward. Managers evaluated five selected cases against a structured quality rubric assessing communication, methodology, and problem resolution.
Reverse-Shadow Review. New hires worked live cases while mentors observed — inverting the traditional shadowing model. Mentors completed structured feedback forms, creating documented behavioral evidence of readiness.
Queue-Ready Assessment. A ten-question, scenario-based assessment testing methodology and judgment — not product knowledge — ensuring new hires understood how to find answers and navigate available tools.
Governance included a RACI matrix assigning clear accountability across TSEs, managers, mentors, L&D, and the Quality Team, plus a risk register with documented mitigation strategies. A planned Phase Two extended evaluation through six-month self-assessments and 360-degree peer reviews.