Role: Instructional Designer and Facilitator (end to end, needs framing through evaluation)

Tools Used: Google Slides, Canva, and Google Vids (deck and video), Participant Workbook, Facilitator's Guide, Claude AI (development support)

Development Time: 2 weeks

Client: Graduate instructional design project

Learners/Audience: Emerging and mid-level leaders in higher education

Executive Summary:  This instructor-led training equips emerging and mid-level higher education leaders with a practical, repeatable leadership method built on the F.L.E.X. framework, delivered as a complete, facilitator-ready package and extended into a self-paced version for blended delivery.

Challenges: Higher education routinely promotes people for scholarly or technical strength, then expects leadership to appear on its own. Emerging and mid-level academic leaders step into program, department, and team responsibilities with no repeatable method for reading people, adapting their approach, and adjusting as conditions change. Leadership training often compounds the problem by staying abstract, describing good leadership without giving these professionals anything they can apply the next day inside the specific realities of a college or university.

Solutions: This instructor-led training gives higher education leaders a practical, repeatable method built on the F.L.E.X. framework: Frame the situation and define success, Learn Your People before acting, Execute with Intention rather than reacting, and eXamine and Adjust through feedback and evaluation. Every module maps to a single F.L.E.X. stage, so the structure itself reinforces the model. The design is grounded in adult learning, favoring real scenarios, reflection, and immediate application over lecture. A full Facilitator's Guide allows any trained facilitator to deliver the course consistently, not only the designer, and a Participant Workbook turns the session into a working document learners keep and reuse. AI-enabled tools, including Claude AI in development and a narrated Canva and Google Vids delivery, supported the build.

Follow-up Blended Learning: The instructor-led course was extended into a fully asynchronous Google Classroom build, preserving instructional integrity across modalities. The self-paced version reinforces each F.L.E.X. stage and lets learners progress independently, extending the live experience into a blended learning pathway.

Results and Impact: Produced a complete, deployable leadership-development ecosystem, an instructor-led course plus a fully asynchronous version, that an institution can run without its original designer, the marker of a scalable program rather than a one-time workshop. Engineered for measurable outcomes: each module ties to a F.L.E.X. stage with built-in evaluation, so a department or institution can track leadership behavior change over time.

Part of: The Adaptive Leader case study

Role: Instructional Designer

Tools Used: Google Docs, Claude AI (outlining and brainstorming support)

Audience: Facilitators delivering a 75-minute leadership session to higher education faculty and academic leaders

Purpose: This guide exists to make the course deliverable by any trained facilitator, not only its designer, with full fidelity. It converts a 75-minute session into a precisely scripted, repeatable experience so an institution can run The Adaptive Leader across departments and cohorts without loss of quality. That portability is what separates a scalable program from a one-time workshop.

What It Includes: Minute-by-minute session flow across all 18 slides, word-for-word SAY scripting with DO, ASK, and WATCH FOR cues, and a legend that lets a facilitator move through the room with intention. It also includes a full pre-session preparation protocol and day-of checklist, technology-failure contingencies for both video and full deck loss, a complete 45-minute compressed version with cut-priority guidance, difficult-moment scripts (the skeptical faculty member, the "I already use all four styles" participant, groups that finish early, running behind), and a post-session protocol with Level 1 evaluation and a 30-day behavioral follow-up.

Design Thinking: I wrote the guide so a facilitator can prepare efficiently and deliver confidently, with the instructional intent behind each segment made explicit, not only what to say, but why the segment exists and what participants should be able to do as a result. The compressed version and FLEX POINT markers build adaptivity into delivery itself, so the guide practices the same situational flexibility the course teaches. Every facilitation move ties back to a learning objective and a stage of the F.L.E.X. model.

What It Demonstrates: Facilitator enablement and program scalability, evaluation-minded design through built-in Level 1 and behavioral follow-up, real-world delivery planning including contingency and time-compression scenarios, and the ability to translate a design into something other professionals can run with fidelity.

Part of: The Adaptive Leader case study

Role: Instructional Designer
 

Tools Used: Google Docs, Claude AI (outlining and brainstorming support)
 

Audience: Emerging and mid-level leaders in higher education

Purpose: The workbook turns the live session into a working document participants use during the training and keep as a reference afterward. It is built as an active learning tool, not a passive handout, structured to move participants from awareness to diagnosis to committed action.

What It Includes: A twelve item leadership style self-assessment with reflection prompts, a one page F.L.E.X. quick reference pairing readiness levels R1 to R4 with the matching leadership style and what each looks like in a higher education context, a structured group scenario-analysis template, four calibrated scenario cards spanning the full readiness range (a new department chair, a stalled course redesign lead, a disengaged veteran faculty member, and an over-managed high performer), a six part personal action plan that requires a named person, a named task, and a named next action, and a reflection page that carries the eXamine step beyond the session.

Design Thinking: I designed the workbook around learner ownership and transfer. Adult learners retain what they use, so the workbook captures their own thinking, applies the framework to real people and tasks they lead, and sends them out with a concrete commitment rather than a stack of slides. The scenario cards are deliberately calibrated to the R1 to R4 range so learners practice the exact diagnostic distinction most leaders get wrong, especially the R3 versus R4 trap. Its structure mirrors the course and the Facilitator Guide stage for stage, so all three assets reinforce one another.

What It Demonstrates: Learner-centered design, adult learning principles in practice, a deliberate focus on transfer and behavior change, and the craft of building materials that live beyond the session.