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WRITING
Below are samples of my writing.


I PAID TO BE BENCHED
AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT I started a new contract by spending money. Hundreds of dollars out of my own pocket, on business insurance I was required to carry just to be allowed to begin. That was a month ago. I’ve earned none of it back — because I haven’t done a single hour of work. They “assigned” me to ten projects. Not one has started. A full month of silence while I sat available, turning down the chance to line up other work, waiting for a green light that never ca
Jul 102 min read


START WITH A TAG, NOT A TESTIMONY
Week 7 · Blog Post 14 · Web 2.0-Based Learning and Performance · Summer 2026 AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT After my last post — where I made the case that a social platform only becomes social learning when people actually make things in it, not just read — I got the obvious follow-up. Okay. But what would you actually do? Fair. Theory is comfortable. Designing the Tuesday-morning activity that a nervous stranger will actually click into is the hard part. So here's the
Jun 253 min read


THE COMMENTS WERE OFF THE WHOLE TIME
Week 7 · Blog Post 13 · Web 2.0-Based Learning and Performance · Summer 2026 AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT I read a study recently that has been rattling around in my head ever since. Researchers looked at how experienced faculty actually used social media in their courses — blogs, wikis, Twitter, the whole kit — and found something quietly devastating. The professors built the blogs. They set up the wikis. And then, in a lot of cases, they turned the comment features
Jun 244 min read


BUILD A DESK THEY CAN ACTUALLY WORK AT
AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT I spent six years in an office before I figured out that the thing making work so hard wasn't the work. I have depression and anxiety. On the page that sounds tidy. In an open-plan office it looked like a woman who wore headphones all day to drown out the chatter, who flinched every time her desk phone rang, who needed the meeting agenda in advance because surprises — a reorg, a "quick" pitch I had to react to live — could tip me into a panic at
Jun 232 min read


THE TRAINING MANAGERS NEVER GOT
9 RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WHO DESIGN MENTAL HEALTH TRAINING FOR MANAGERS Week 7 · Blog Post 12 · Web 2.0-Based Learning and Performance · Summer 2026 AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT Managers are the first people to notice when someone on their team is struggling — and the least likely to have been trained for that moment. This is a small, opinionated collection for the people who build that training: the frameworks, design moves, guardrails, and a few things from my own des
Jun 221 min read


THE ACCIDENTAL CURRICULUM
Week 6 · Blog Post 11 · Web 2.0-Based Learning and Performance · Summer 2026 AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT Every time someone scrolls past a wellness reel, a "things my therapist told me" carousel, or a stranger's three-paragraph caption about their anxiety, they're learning something. Not because they meant to. Because the feed teaches whether or not anyone designed it to. I read four pieces recently that, stacked together, reshaped how I think about building a mental
Jun 213 min read


THE KNOWLEDGEBASE THAT WON'T SIT STILL
Week 6 · Blog Post 10 · Web 2.0-Based Learning and Performance · Summer 2026 AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT THE FILING CABINET PROBLEM I have a confession about corporate knowledgebases: most of them are where good information goes to be politely ignored. You know the type — a shared drive, a wiki nobody edits, a "single source of truth" that's true exactly once, on the day it ships, and then quietly drifts out of date while everyone goes back to asking the one person w
Jun 203 min read


A FLOOR UNDER THE OPEN DOOR: DESIGNING MENTAL HEALTH MICROLEARNING AS OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
Week 5 · Blog Post 9 · Web 2.0-Based Learning and Performance · Summer 2026 AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT There's a thought experiment I keep coming back to from a chapter I read on sharing microlearning as open educational resources (Word & Dennen, 2021). You tweak a recipe — more almond, the oven dropped to 325 because yours runs hot — and people ask for it. Do you guard it, or hand it over so they can make it their own? The open answer is obvious: hand it over. Free
Jun 143 min read


I NAMED AN INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER MODEL AFTER MYSELF — AND I'D STILL CHANGE IT
Week 5 · Blog Post 8 · Web 2.0-Based Learning and Performance · Summer 2026 AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT THE EMBARRASSING PART FIRST Let me get it out of the way: I built my own instructional design model, and the acronym spells my last name. DALEY — Discover, Analyze, Learning Solution, Execute, Yield. I'd love to claim this was a happy accident, five phases that just happened to line up. It wasn't. I backed into it on purpose, which puts me in the distinguished comp
Jun 84 min read


BEING FELT, NOT JUST SEEN: THE QUIET POWER (AND RISK) OF EMOTIONAL HASHTAGS
Week 4 · Blog Post 7 · Web 2.0-Based Learning and Performance · Summer 2026 AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT I WENT LOOKING FOR A TACTIC I went looking for a growth tactic and came back with an ethics problem. This happens to me more than I'd like to admit. The question I started with was narrow and, frankly, a little mercenary: how do I get more people to actually engage with the mental health platform I'm building — not just scroll past it, but comment, respond, come ba
Jun 53 min read


YOU DON'T GET AUTONOMY BY REMOVING THE GUARDRAILS
Week 4 · Blog Post 6 · Web 2.0-Based Learning and Performance · Summer 2026 AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT THE OPTIONAL TRAP There's a finding tucked into a study on embedded microlearning challenges that I haven't been able to shake. Researchers dropped optional, 15-minute, choose-your-own challenges into a higher ed course — make a meme about how the semester's going, design a teacher Bitmoji avatar, research a day in the life of a teacher and turn it into a video. Lo
Jun 34 min read


YOU HAVE TO BUILD THE BELIEF BEFORE YOU CAN BUILD THE SKILL
Week 3 · Blog Post 5 · Web 2.0-Based Learning and Performance · Summer 2026 AI-Generated Image | ChatGPT THE DESIGN QUESTION I KEEP CIRCLING I've been sitting with a thorny design problem for a few weeks now: how do you build a platform to teach people something they've been actively avoiding — possibly for years? The context I keep returning to is mental health education. Not a clinical tool. A learning platform where someone struggling with anxiety or depression can
May 263 min read


How Associates Use Workday to Address Disciplinary Actions
This job aid describes how Wawa Associates review and complete disciplinary actions in Workday.


It's Time for Change: An Instructional Systems Design Model
This paper outlines an instructional systems design model for Wawa, a company known for its convenience stores and gas stations.
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