Introducing the Learning Design Blog

by Erin Kelley
April 19, 2022

The Learning Design Team is delighted to introduce a series of short blog articles pertaining to various ways to institute best practices for teaching and learning. There is no shortage of academic and professional research, so we will bring you short articles highlighting ideas and inspirations to draw out and engage your students. Articles include a wide variety of topics related to course design, teaching practices, improving outcomes and other topics readers might suggest.

Who is on the Learning Design Team?

The Learning Design team is focused on providing instructors, centers, and labs with the pedagogical tools and knowledge necessary to continue the spirit of teaching excellence that has shaped our institutional history. The members of this team support Bentley faculty in designing and assessing courses to maximize student learning through their expertise in learning experience design, assessing learning outcomes, inclusive pedagogies, multimedia course elements and online course development. 

We encourage anyone with questions about improving learning design to reach out to us individually via the contact information below, or as a team at learningdesign@bentley.edu.

The core members of this team and their areas of specialization include:

Erin Kelley, Associate Dean of Assurance of Learning & Accreditation
Areas of specialization: accreditation compliance, developing student learning outcomes at the course, program and institutional level, inclusive pedagogy, and assessing student learning. 
Contact: ekelley@bentley.edu 781-891-2329 

Debra Mascott, Senior Instructional Designer
Areas of specialization: design and development of interactive courses and lessons using Articulate Storyline among other applications, scenario case building, digital storytelling, infographics and visual design, assessment (test) design and document conversion to LMS formats etc.
Contact: dmascott@bentley.edu 781-891-3108 

MJ Sanz, Director of Learning Design
Areas of specialization: instructional design in higher education, design and development of online courses, faculty training, and faculty and administration support for Promotion & Tenure application sites and Faculty Activity Reporting via Faculty Success (formerly Digital Measures).
Contact: msanz@bentley.edu 781-891-2591 

This team provides workshops to faculty and staff in academic affairs on these topics and is available for individual questions and support.

Thank you for your time in reading this first blog post to orient you further to this team. Subsequent posts will focus further on topics related to learning design and will provide additional information and resources.

Look for our Upcoming Workshops:

We hold a wide range of workshops on various topics such as inclusive pedagogy, classroom strategies, course design and LMS design.