Uncharted Learning, Not-for-Profit
As Director of Products and Programs, I investigate industries and bring those industries into high school classrooms as authentically as possible. The entrepreneurship program helps schools create an incubator, guiding students as they build real startups and pitch for real investment money. The coding program helps schools create a development studio, guiding students as they learn code and then take on client work. Highlights:
- Collaborated with Apple to gain Apple Professional Learning Provider status
- Expanded offerings based on education needs and industry requirements
- Oversaw and directed over 6 programs across 2 industries
High School Coding Program
I spearheaded a major initiative to bring Mobile Makers brilliance to life in high school classrooms. I designed the Mobile Makers iOS Development High School Program wherein we train teachers in iOS development and provide curriculum to support the apprenticeship model education in the classroom. Teachers walk away from our summer training with the ability to code in Swift – Apple’s new language – a year’s worth of curriculum (including formative and summative assessments), and access to working developers who are willing to answer questions throughout the year. Very proud of what we’ve built here. Highlights:
- Much to our pleasure, we were honored to present our program at SWSWEdu 2015 in Austin. Shout out to Dr. Leonard for showing us a good time.
- 92% of students who took the iOS program say that they are interested in taking another CS course.
- Schools increased an average of 2 sections in their CS programs due to high student interest in this program. One school went from 1 section of CS programming to 4 sections in one year.
Coding Bootcamp
As Director of Education and eventually as CEO, I helped change the face of what post-secondary education looks like at Mobile Makers Academy in Chicago. I collaborated with an amazing team to take adults from no programming experience to entry-ready mobile software developers in 8 weeks. Using revolutionary learning sciences, I married constructivist and apprenticeship models to create a supportive-yet-demanding learning environment where students gain both hard and soft skills that are necessary to be successful in the field. All this with project-based learning and assessment to measure student learning. We didn’t just help teach people how to code; we helped them become developers. Highlights of my time:
- Spearheaded the development of the Mobile Makers High School iOS Development Program (see above)
- Safely navigated the company through a transaction to ensure best stewardship and responsibility to the business and our customers
- Developed and launched certificate and assessment model
- Collaborated with leadership to develop instructional staff model to ensure our instructors are working developers
- Crafted an educational model to both replicate the development shop while retaining necessary learning environment components
Competency-based MBA Program
In 2012 and 2013, I led the instructional design and development of a competency-based graduate degree program. My work helped ensure the academic integrity of the program, which ultimately led to regional accreditation approval through WASC. Highlights:
- Led the design of the home-grown LMS to best support and drive learning in a competency-based model.
- Managed a team of instructional designers to create 30 courses.
- Collaborated with Tom Zane, a leading educational psychometrician on objective and performance-based assessment development, to manage and lead a team of psychometric editors and assessment developers.