© Sarah Barker, PhD. All portfolio work is original and proprietary. Samples are representative of the design approach and methodology.
| Role | Instructional Designer / Scenario Writer / Learning Experience Designer |
|---|---|
| Scope | Capstone micro-simulation for crisis text volunteers completing their final week of training before going live |
| Audience | New volunteers at crisis text and mental health support organizations |
| Format | Immersive scenario, branching logic, consequence-based feedback, reflection |
| Tools & Standards | Adobe Captivate 13, SCORM 1.2, xAPI, WCAG 2.1 AA (Likert slider interaction is optimized for desktop training. Mobile users may experience limited functionality on confidence rating slides). |
| Deliverables | Scenario-based micro-simulation, branching storyboard, Hear Reflect Pace framework, pre/post confidence instrument, supervisor observation checklist |
This module was designed from a specific premise: that adults learn most durably when experience precedes instruction. Aesthetic education rooted in Dewey's concept of experiential unity and extended through the embodied cognition research of Zull and Greene's wide-awakeness framework holds that learning becomes integrated only when it is first felt. A learner who encounters a framework before experiencing its necessity will apply it mechanically. A learner who has already felt the weight of a wrong choice will consider the framework differently. This module is built on that distinction. Every structural decision — the withholding of the framework, the consequence at the human level, the original sound design, the image that opens the experience — is an application of aesthetic learning theory.
Crisis text volunteers face their highest risk in the first 60 seconds of a conversation. A person has just typed something that signals distress. The volunteer has to respond. Most volunteer training introduces communication frameworks before placing learners in the situation. The result is training that informs without transforming. Learners encounter the emotional weight of the work for the first time during an actual conversation, not in a safe practice environment.
A capstone micro-simulation placing volunteers at the moment their training has been building toward — their first live text exchange. Before any framework is reviewed, the learner makes a real choice. They watch what happens to the conversation. Only after that consequence does the design surface the Hear Reflect Pace framework, because by then the learner has felt why it matters, and what’s at stake.
Aesthetic learning as architecture. The sequence of this module is its primary instructional strategy. The Hear Reflect Pace framework is withheld until after the learner has made their first choice and felt its consequence, because that is the condition under which the framework becomes meaningful rather than procedural. This is Dewey's aesthetic principle in direct application: the experience must achieve unity and emotional completion before abstraction can land with force.
Consequence at the human level. Feedback does not evaluate the learner's choice. It shows what happens in the conversation, whether the person on the other end opens up or begins to withdraw. That is the consequence that matters in this context.
Recovery as a skill. When a response begins to close the conversation, the simulation does not end. It pauses, reflects, and offers a second path, modeling the regulation practice crisis communicators use in real exchanges.
Sound design as aesthetic encounter. The module opens with original sound design, breathing audio paired with a single image, before any text or instruction appears. This is not an engagement technique. It is the aesthetic encounter that primes the learner's attention and creates the felt sense of human presence before the scenario begins.
Reflection is the closing act. The module ends by asking the learner to notice their first instinct, not to judge it, but to observe it. That metacognitive step is the final application of the aesthetic learning principle: meaning made from experience, not delivered through content.