In 2020, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital began the arduous process of accreditation, seeking to become a higher education leader in the field of biomedical sciences. I became the sole instructional designer for the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences with the task of bringing both their PhD and Masters’ programs online in less than one month.
For the first year, the task was relatively simple; create an interactive Canvas LMS course shell for each of the 28 courses that contained all organizational policies and lecture materials. The project quickly grew as the faculty recognized the value of the learning platform, and the need for additional third-party software integration became necessary.
In this role, I not only served as a course developer but also as an LMS administrator and support contact. In addition to those duties, I was responsible for the management of materials, which required a combination of project coordinator/management skills using several types of software. The task was herculean, but given that the faculty works every day to find cures for childhood cancer, I was more than happy to remain highly flexible at all hours to be part of this amazing organization.
As the sole instructional designer and manager of the Canvas LMS, I was responsible for:
- Developing 17 courses for the PhD in Biomedical Sciences program
- Developing 11 courses for the Masters in Clinical Investigations Program
- Collaborating with leaders in child cancer research to deliver instructional materials online
- Developing and delivering Canvas training materials for the faculty
- Developing professional development programs to guide best practices for online teaching
- Creating evaluation materials to be used for faculty/lecturer evaluation
- Creating and deploying course evaluations for administration
- Managing the collection and cataloging of over 1,500 instructional assets from the graduate school faculty
- Scheduling synchronous online course meetings via third-party integrations within Canvas
Due to the highly sensitive nature of this project, screenshots are not permitted per my contract. Samples can be provided via interview.
Skills Used
- Agile-based, SAM Design Method
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Articulate Storyline 360
- Canvas Learning Management System (with the following integrations)
- EvaluationKIT
- Canvas Studio
- Perusall
- ProctorFree
- Office 365
- Cisco WebEx intergration (PhD courses)
- Zoom integration (Master’s courses)
- WebEx/Outlook synchronization
