Monica M W Russell

Their argument is not that tools do not matter; it is that the tools that survived solved a real learning problem rather than claiming to do everything. They use AI selectively and keep low-tech references within reach, saying the tools changed how fast they could act on an answer, not the answer itself.

Monica M W Russell notes getting certified in a digital adoption platform twice and says it did not replace them: it challenged their creativity and made them better. They describe keeping a dictionary on the desk, a thesaurus within arm's reach, and two book stacks, one for thinking and one for learning something new.

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A middle-school student faked a frozen iPad mid-lesson, but a still-spinning ceiling fan gave the trick away. Russell treats the moment as a design failure rather than a student problem and links it to the No Significant Difference phenomenon: decades of studies comparing classroom and distance learning find that the delivery medium does not automatically determine outcomes, while the design does.

After the ceiling-fan moment, Russell stopped teaching “play what you practiced” through a screen and started teaching “let’s try something new,” adding games, improvisation, and shorter, more focused tasks.

• The student began composing original music, and Russell added composing to in-person lessons too.
• One technical fix, Zoom’s original sound setting, is named and then set aside: “the tools were never the actual fix.”

The change was not a new platform but a change in lesson design; Russell later carried the same composing activity back into in-person teaching.

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They describe working in Lovable with AI as a thinking partner to make a Piano Practice Coach, and using Claude to help build a fairly complex Articulate Storyline game with a Monopoly-style feel. They state plainly that they are not a developer and that having no idea what they were doing turned out to be the point: you cannot understand a shift from the sidelines, and being a beginner again is one of the most important professional skills.

The Piano Practice Coach is aimed at young piano students who hit “I can’t do this” moments, teaching them to coach themselves through frustration.

• The Storyline game was tested with a five-year-old usability tester who liked everything except the lack of trucks; that feedback went onto the next sprint backlog.
• Russell also names the game’s limits up front: progress cannot be saved and results cannot be sent to a teacher.

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The Piano Practice Coach helps students work through frustration by teaching them to coach themselves.

• The redesigned online lesson built toward the student composing their own music.
• Russell closes the online-teaching post with a learning-analytics orientation: wanting to know what works and what does not, and to meet learners wherever they are.
• Their diagnostic stance is that when learners check out, you should look at how the content is taught rather than blame the content.

The app’s purpose is instructional rather than entertainment: it helps students handle “I can’t do this” moments.

• In the piano-lesson example, the measurable change was that the student started composing.
• Russell says they want to use learning analytics to give learners what they need.

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The chain they draw is Human, Motivation, Learning, Design, Execution, Craft, and Meaning.

• The named authors are presented as separate evidence rather than as Russell’s own claims: Patricia C.
• Broderick and Pamela Blewitt on human development and context; Julie Dirksen on motivation and on what learners need to do; Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky, and Terrence Sejnowski on working memory, retrieval, practice, cognitive load, and spaced repetition; Mike Williams on the definition of done; Tim Slade on production craft; and Emile Pandolfi on communication and meaning.

Russell writes, “I thought I was just buying books, but instead, I was collecting evidence.” Each book gets a one-line design takeaway, from context (“what might we be missing if we only look at the behavior in front of us?”) to the point that putting information in front of someone and learning are not the same thing.

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Tim Slade is credited twice: once for a video that pushed Russell further into AI-assisted build work, and once in a thank-you post about a book that arrived and sat unnoticed on top of the piano.

• Russell describes the instructional design community as people who encourage one another, share what they know, and celebrate each other’s work.
• The thank-you post is personal and community-focused and carries no instructional-design argument on its own; the mentions show public credit, not a commercial partnership.

In the AI-building post, Russell thanks Tim Slade, whose video prompted the push into building the Storyline game. In the thank-you post, they describe the book’s arrival on the piano and say reading starts “in 5, 4, 3.”

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Read it to understand the test every tool has to pass before it earns a place in the work.

Russell says they have been asked some version of "will AI replace instructional designers?" for 25 years, and walks through the waves of tools that arrived with that promise: the LMS was going to replace trainers, rapid authoring tools were going to replace instructional designers, then MOOCs were going to replace corporate training, followed by mobile learning, microlearning, digital adoption platforms, the move from Flash to HTML5, and excitement around VR and AR.

• Their lesson is specific: the tools that survived were not the ones that claimed to do everything, but the ones that solved a real learning problem.
• They got certified in a digital adoption platform twice, and say it did not replace them — it "challenged my creativity and made me better."
• AI is one more tool in the box, used when it makes sense, because "the tools just changed how fast I could act on the answer."
• The post ends on a deliberately low-tech picture: a dictionary on the desk, a thesaurus within arm's reach, one stack of books read to think and another read to learn something new.

For brands planning a campaign

A natural frame for a workshop opening or webinar for a corporate training audience: a designer with decades of experience across successive hype cycles who can help a client team assess whether a tool solves a real learning problem or merely claims to. It also sets up an honest position on AI that reads as neither boosterism nor refusal.

It answers whether the person advising a team on AI integration has built anything with it.

After 25+ years in instructional design, Russell decided to stop talking about building apps and build one: a Piano Practice Coach made in Lovable, with AI as a thinking partner.

• The tool is aimed at young piano students who hit "I can't do this" moments, teaching them to coach themselves through them.
• Russell states plainly, "I'm not a developer," and describes stretches of having absolutely no idea what they were doing — treating that as the point and arguing that being bad at something new on purpose is a professional skill.
• In a second example, after watching a video from instructional designer Tim Slade, they pushed Claude to help build a fairly complex Articulate Storyline game with a Monopoly-style feel for young piano students, and say they were amazed at what the two produced together.
• The post names the game's limits: progress cannot be saved and results cannot be sent to a teacher.
• It also reports real feedback — a five-year-old usability tester liked everything except the lack of trucks, and that comment went onto the next sprint backlog.
• The post closes by asking readers what they have intentionally made themselves a beginner at lately.

For brands planning a campaign

Strong material for a hands-on prototyping segment: a designer who will build a working sample in a session and say what it cannot do yet. The five-year-old tester offers a concrete example of putting a rough build in front of a real learner early and using the feedback to shape the next version.

Start here to see how the pieces of the practice fit together.

Framed as a National Book Lovers Day investigation, the post opens with a line that captures the approach: "I thought I was just buying books, but instead, I was collecting evidence."

• Seven exhibits follow, each with the reason it belongs.
• The Human — Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals by Patricia C.
• Broderick and Pamela Blewitt, for context, asking, "what might we be missing if we only look at the behavior in front of us?"
• The Elephant — Talk to the Elephant by Julie Dirksen, on motive, noting that people do not change behavior just because they were given correct information; motivation, emotion, identity, habits, environment, and friction are all suspects, and sometimes training has an airtight alibi.
• The Brain — Uncommon Sense Teaching by Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky and Terrence Sejnowski, covering working memory, retrieval, practice, connections, cognitive load, and spaced repetition.
• Russell calls it their favorite, noting that putting information in front of someone and learning are not the same thing.
• The Design — Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen, asking what people actually need to do and what could be designed to help.
• The Definition of Done — Doing to Done by Mike Williams, which they return to when overloaded with data, tasks, and thoughts.
• The Craft — The Instructional Design Handbook by Tim Slade, on the moment someone has to build the thing, ideally not because a colleague dropped "you need to build a course" into a Teams chat.
• The Unexpected Witness — Play It Like You Mean It by Emile Pandolfi, an apparently unrelated piano book that prompts the question, "What am I actually trying to communicate?"
• The post closes with the chain it all adds up to: Human — Motivation — Learning — Design — Execution — Craft — Meaning.

For brands planning a campaign

A ready-made pre-read or reading list for a client learning team, sequenced from context through motivation, cognition, design, completion, craft, and meaning. Each title can anchor a workshop module, and the underlying point — that design decisions should be traceable to evidence about how people learn — is an argument a training company would want this instructor making to its own staff.

It shows why design, not delivery format, determines whether learners stay engaged.

In 2020 the music school Russell works at decided online teaching was something it had to do, and Russell "hated it" — the audio clipped, the lag was brutal, and Russell kept teaching the same in-person lessons through a screen, wondering why the students were not getting it.

• The turning point came from a middle schooler who, after a full day of online classes, faked a frozen iPad mid-lesson with what Russell calls Oscar-worthy commitment.
• It nearly worked, except the student's ceiling fan was still spinning in the background, and Russell pointed that out.
• The laugh that followed told Russell something the lesson plans had not: the student was not bored with piano, but bored with the lack of creative instructional design in that moment.
• The change that followed was concrete — stop teaching "play what you practiced" through a screen and start with "let's try something new," adding games, improvisation, and shorter, more focused tasks, watching videos together, creating and interpreting music together.
• The student began composing original music, and Russell added composing to in-person lessons as well.
• One technical fix is named and then set aside: Zoom's original sound setting helped, "but the tools were never the actual fix."
• The post links the experience to the No Significant Difference phenomenon, the decades of studies finding that the delivery medium does not automatically determine outcomes while the design does, and closes on wanting to use learning analytics to meet learners where they are.
• It carries the hashtags #NotesFromThePianoBench and #88keys.

For brands planning a campaign

A strong single story for a practical workshop on instructional design: a diagnostic moment, a redesign, a measurable change in what the learner did next, and a named research concept. It also gives instructors a concrete example to use when a client assumes a platform migration or new delivery format will fix a course nobody finishes.

The clearest example is a 2020 online piano lesson in which a middle-school student faked a frozen screen, but a still-spinning ceiling fan exposed the trick.

• They treat the moment as a design failure rather than a student problem, then rebuild the lesson around games, improvisation, and shorter tasks, noting that the student began composing.
• The post names the No Significant Difference phenomenon: decades of studies comparing classroom and distance learning find that the delivery medium does not automatically determine outcomes.
• They also connect this to learning analytics: wanting to know what works and meet learners where they are.

Uses a personal teaching failure as a case, grounds it in named research, then draws a design lesson.

For brands planning a campaign

For a corporate training company rethinking instructional design, this is an argument for starting with learner behavior and task design rather than platform choice. A workshop could use the ceiling-fan story as a live diagnosis exercise: what looked like a technology problem was a design problem.

Examples: Source 1

The app's purpose is instructional: helping students work through "I can't do this" moments by teaching them to coach themselves.

• They state plainly that they are not a developer and that not knowing what they were doing was the point, framing deliberate beginnerhood as a professional skill.
• The Storyline game was tested with a five-year-old usability tester whose feedback went onto the next sprint backlog.

Documents the actual build tools (Lovable, Claude, Articulate Storyline), a named output, and a usability test with concrete feedback.

For brands planning a campaign

A workshop on practical instructional design and AI integration can include a hands-on build or live demo grounded in real artifacts rather than slides about AI. The five-year-old tester also supports a short, practical usability-testing exercise participants can run with real learners.

Examples: Source 1

The conclusion: tools survive when they solve a real learning problem, not when they claim to do everything. They use AI but not for everything, and keep a dictionary, a thesaurus, and two book stacks within reach—one for thinking, one for learning something new.

A historical pattern argument built from named tool generations, with a personal-use disclaimer rather than a blanket endorsement or rejection of AI.

The post takes a deliberately non-triumphal stance: it neither dismisses AI nor treats it as the latest replacement. Its position is selective: use it when it fits.

For brands planning a campaign

A workshop can offer a credible, non-hype segment on evaluating new L&D tools: which past tools survived contact with real learners and why. This gives a corporate audience a way to assess AI tooling against learning problems instead of adoption pressure.

Examples: Source 1

They trace the chain: Human → Motivation → Learning → Design → Execution → Craft → Meaning.

Detective case-file framing; each book is presented as evidence with a one-line design takeaway rather than a review.

For brands planning a campaign

This provides a source-linked reading map for a practical instructional design workshop, covering motivation, cognitive science, and production craft in one sequence. The exhibit format is easy to reuse as a handout or pre-work reading list, and shows which references Russell works from.

Examples: Source 1

The instructional stance is diagnostic: when learners check out, look at how the content is taught rather than blaming the content.

For brands planning a campaign

For a training company, this supports a workshop module on designing for learner self-direction: building practice, feedback, and self-coaching into courses instead of relying on delivery or content volume. It also offers a plain-language argument for measuring learner behavior after launch.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Two posts use a detective/case-file structure—one for a book list, one for the book-lovers post—and one closes with a light personal question about where family members hide important things. The tone is reflective and collegial rather than promotional.

Scene → principle → reader question; detective framing as a recurring device; posts often end with an invitation to comment.

The thank-you post to Tim Slade is personal and community-focused, with no instructional-design argument. It shows the same collegial tone.

For brands planning a campaign

A workshop or co-produced content piece should expect a discussion-driven, story-led format rather than a lecture or product pitch. The question-led endings offer a practical template for audience engagement and comment threads that a campaign can plan around.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4 · Source 5

That post also describes the instructional design community as people who encourage one another, share what they know, and celebrate each other's work; they say they are grateful to be part of it.

The posts show public credit and community membership, not a commercial or formal partnership. Do not infer payment from the mentions.

For brands planning a campaign

A corporate training company could use the community framing as a workshop angle—peer learning and shared practice—and consider whether a named peer would be a relevant co-presenter. Verify any relationship directly before presenting it as a partnership.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

They framed the build as an experiment and invited reader feedback rather than presenting it as a product for sale.

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They also state plainly where they do not use AI: dictionaries, thesauruses, and books kept within reach on their desk.

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They are explicit that they are not a developer and treat the build as a deliberate exercise in being a beginner again.

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In a separate post, they thank him for a book he sent as a gift, describing it as part of a community of instructional designers who share and encourage each other's work.

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Like Russell, Stephens insists on reviewing AI output rather than accepting it, and links that to bias and ethical use—the same human-discretion argument Russell makes when they say no tool has ever answered every question for them.

Stephens's evidence centers on running a consulting business and developing leaders at high-tech companies, through programs, panel commentary on AI bias, and client results. Russell works closer to individual practice: building apps and games by hand, teaching through classroom-style stories, and grounding arguments in learning science rather than organizational program design.

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Ly's review of a Vyond 2D animation course, assessing pacing, examples, and hands-on projects, shares Russell's habit of judging a tool by what it actually lets a learner do.

Ly's posts are course reviews and career-transition notes aimed largely at teachers moving into instructional design, with a visual-design and animation focus. Russell writes for experienced practitioners, documents their own AI-assisted builds, and draws on learning science and design arguments rather than tool reviews; their teaching background is music rather than visual art.

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Christian's scuba-instructor story does the same work as Russell's piano-lesson story: a personal teaching situation turned into a design lesson, with public credit to people who helped along the way.

Christian's posts are shorter reflections on career change, community, and mentors, with the design point implied rather than argued. Russell takes a single incident and works it into a design diagnosis, builds working prototypes to test AI, and cites researchers and books by name.

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Stephens has posted about speaking on an Indeed Think Tank panel on AI in L&D, discussing bias in AI systems, a tone shift tied to geography, human discretion, fact-checking, and disclosure of AI-generated artifacts.

• Stephens also announced iNStep Consulting, describing leadership and training programs for high-tech companies, the SmartLeader Program, emotional intelligence, and a stated 16% profitability increase from improved cross-department collaboration.
• Stephens is a stronger alternative when the workshop needs to address AI policy, ethical review, or leadership behavior more than hands-on design prototyping.

The posts lean toward consulting, leadership development, and AI ethics rather than practical instructional-design prototyping or testing learning tools.

• They offer little evidence of selective AI use in a design process.
• The business outcome claim comes from Stephens's own announcement and is not independently verified.
• Before booking, ask about the workshop’s format, fees, audience size, and how to inquire.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Ly described moving from high school art teacher to Senior Curriculum Instructional Design Specialist at VSP Vision and listed project variety, team, growth opportunities, culture, and purpose-driven work as reasons for staying.

• Ly also described a Vyond 2D character animation course in detail, covering course structure, pacing, practical projects, and portfolio use.
• Ly is a stronger alternative when the workshop should help transitioning teachers, build tool confidence, or add animation and visual storytelling skills.

The posts focus on career transition, employer experience, and tool skill-building, with little evidence of AI integration, diagnosing learning-design problems, or deciding when AI is appropriate.

• They do not document an AI panel, an AI ethics position, or learner-testing examples.
• Before booking, ask for examples of how the workshop addresses AI and learner testing.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Christian taught scuba diving full-time for more than ten years before a post-pandemic move to instructional design, then returned to teach an intro scuba class and described the value of stretching beyond a specialty to keep a broader, more creative, more human-centered perspective.

• Christian also credited John Hinchliffe and L&D community meetups for support in entering the industry.
• Christian is a stronger alternative when the workshop should emphasize teaching range, learner empathy, or professional community.

The posts focus on teaching background, professional community, and the value of diversification, with little evidence of AI integration, selective AI use, or building and testing learning tools.

• They do not describe a repeatable workshop method or an AI decision framework.
• Before booking, ask how the workshop covers AI and hands-on tool testing.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2