Spring

EDUC 432: DESIGNING EXPLORABLE EXPLANATIONS

The quarter before, Ishita and I ran an experiment showing that prompts embedded in a climate simulator reduced exploration depth and converted curiosity into checklist completion. So when I started building ViewFinder, an explorable that teaches ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and lens choice, I faced a contradiction of my own making. I was designing six guided modules for the kind of learner I just shown gets less curious when you guide them. So I built the modules to run on prediction first and explanation second, and I made them carry only the vocabulary: the dials, the stops, the logic of equivalent exposures. Then they unlock and step back. ViewFinder Pro, the free simulator at the end, runs without any prompts. De Jong and Van Joolingen's review of discovery learning explains why neither half survives on its own. Open exploration collapses when learners do not know what to manipulate or observe, and guidance forecloses the inquiry it claims to serve. The smallest choice made this concrete. I replaced the continuous brightness sliders with rotary dials locked to real photographic stops, because a slider lets a learner drag toward a pleasing image without ever understanding why it looks that way. That is the false mastery I know firsthand, from the years I spent making wedding videos before I understood that competence and meaning are not the same thing. Fluency is what the learner builds once the scaffolding is out of the way. I am leaving this course convinced that scaffolding and exploration are not opposing values. The design work lies in deciding where each one belongs, and in what order.

EDUC 254: DIGITAL LEARNING DESIGN WORKSHOP

This quarter, we conducted several design sprints to build and test features for Dial-In, ensuring they are grounded in the learning sciences. For example, I ran A/B tests with teachers to determine which dashboard view of student results provided the most actionable insights for their upcoming classes. This iterative, collaborative process reaffirmed that teachers are the best experts on their own needs; centering their feedback helped us design a tool that integrates with their existing workflows rather than adding to their already time-constrained schedules. 

Additionally, we explored strategies for sustaining mission-driven projects in low-resource communities. Consulting with experts like Piya Sorcar (creator of TeachAids) helped me realize that Dial-In’s long-term sustainability depends on building strong relationships with local and national governments in Zambia and securing initial support from philanthropic institutions in the US.

EDUC 229C: LEARNING DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR

This quarter's LDT seminar centered on testing and iterating, and, like the Learning Design Challenge, it pushed me to test individual components of Dial-In rather than the whole product at once, so I could confirm that each component was grounded in the learning sciences. One of those tests reshaped how Dial-In reports student understanding. I had been sorting responses into emerging gaps and critical gaps, but when I put those categories in front of teachers, they interpreted them inconsistently. What counted as critical to one teacher read as emerging to another. After talking it through with them, I replaced the labels with Misconceptions, Partial Understanding, and Strengths. The change matters beyond wording. It moves the dashboard toward an asset-based view that shows teachers not only where students struggle but also what they already grasp, and it frames every result against the specific lessons the teacher taught rather than against an external standard.

Peer feedback in the seminar changed the product in a second way. My classmates pointed out places where Dial-In could add productive friction without slowing teachers down in their daily use, and that balance led to two new features. Before a teacher writes a question to check for understanding, Dial-In now prompts them to reflect on what they want students to take away, a step that echoes what Learning Trial 7 taught me about the value of reflection before question-writing. The teacher then provides an exemplar answer to their own question. That exemplar becomes the baseline for what the teacher wants students to learn, and Dial-In uses it as a reference point to surface Misconceptions, Partial Understanding, and Strengths across student responses. Alongside these design changes, I worked with Dr. Demszky on the IRB process so that we can pilot Dial-In this summer and run a proper efficacy study.

EDUC 215: EDUCATION INTERNSHIP WORKSHOP

During Winter Quarter 2026, I started consulting at the Institute on Generosity, and it continued until the spring quarter. I am the Communications and Marketing Consultant at the Institute on Generosity, the private operating foundation Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen founded to unlock extraordinary generosity in individuals through research, content, and convening. The Institute brought me on to run communications. What I did was build the system that the Institute needed to speak because there was no content infrastructure when I arrived.

In the first month, I developed a media and communication strategy, then the website launch, the founder video content, the social media architecture, the newsletter system, the analytics reporting, and the production standard operating procedures to ensure the work could continue after me. My goal coming into the Institute was not to build anything to make myself indispensable; instead, I was always in the mindset of “How do I build a system to be handed off?” From working in the nonprofit space, I believe that an organization should not depend on the person who set up its systems; anyone should be able to run, change, and outgrow them. Somewhere in the middle of writing those procedures, I realized I was not doing communications or marketing.

I had transitioned to doing learning design under a different title. I designed how an organization learns to talk about itself, build feedback loops, and scaffolds so the next person could pick up the work and understand it. The clearest version of this came from the analytics. For weeks, the dashboard told me that almost half of our traffic arrived from nowhere, labeled direct and none, a shrug of a category. The fix was small and unglamorous, a tagging convention on every outbound link, but the lesson was not small. My job was not to make content, but to teach the organization to see itself.