The great work your organization requires that employees fully understand the processes and regulatory standards. While the required guidelines are essential—and, let’s face it, not always the most exciting—following them is crucial to successful operations. People learn best when they feel valued and engaged. As a learning facilitator and instructional designer, I create effective learning opportunities that allow employees for mission-driven organizations to quickly return to making a difference and a return on investment.

When I discovered that many learners in my social work course were writing their first lengthy research paper using academic sources, I knew I needed to strategically design and scaffold learning activities to cover the fundamentals of academic writing. At the same time, it was essential to seamlessly connect this critical information to the main course topics.

I consulted with the Director of the College Writing Program to do a needs analysis around APA formatting. She provided insight into the learning objectives and activities of foundational writing courses. We discussed the necessity and opportunity of building on basic content in more advanced, career-focused assignments. 

Recognizing that formatting in-text citations can be unfamiliar at best, or seem unnecessary at worst, I broke down the steps and rationale behind them in a PowerPoint presentation. I chose to forgo images to prevent distraction, using different slide designs for visual variety instead. Examples from timely academic articles related to social work course topics helped to engage learners by providing relevance.

I designed the PowerPoint for the class using standard best practices including a "brand" for the specific course with recurring colors and font, along with a topic slide at the start and a reminders slide at the end. This presentation about in-text citations opened with a brief meditation, used to foster a trauma-informed environment typical of the industry (social work higher education). It also included time for an in-class practice exercise worth bonus points to energize and excite learners. The meditation, presentation, and exercise were designed for a class period lasting 1 hour and 15 minutes long.