Hey everyone, how you doing today?
I have an incredible episode for you.
In this conversation, I sit down with no other than Whitney
Kilgore, the powerhouse cofounder of I Design and a true
champion for educators everywhere.
We talk about her inspiring journey from the classroom to
the forefront of instructional design and educational
technology. Whitney opens up about what it
was like navigating both K to 12 and higher Ed, the major shifts
that happened during the pandemic, and why now more than
ever, educators deserve to have their skills recognized and
celebrated. Suppose you're in the middle of
a career pivot, trying to figure out what's next or just need
some encouragement. In that case, this episode will
remind you that your teaching experience matters and that with
the right community and support, you can absolutely thrive in the
world of learning design. Let's dive in.
Hi, we're ispring, an international team of e-learning
enthusiasts who help more than 60,000 clients across the globe
succeed with better online learning.
Our two flagship solutions are ispring Suite and ispring Learn
LMS. Ispring Suite is an intuitive,
all in one authoring tool for creating engaging e-learning
content, and ispringlearn is an innovative online training
platform for onboarding, upskilling, and certifying your
teams. We also provide tons of free
resources for aspiring and experienced e-learning
professionals, conduct weekly webinars with top industry
experts, and organize annual e-learning conferences,
challenges, and championships. We'd be happy to get to know you
and pick a solution that fits your needs best.
Go to www.icebringsolutions.com to learn more about us, download
our resources and connect. Hello everyone and welcome to
another fabulous episode of EDUP LND.
My name is Holly Owens and I'm your host and I'm really
excited. I'm really honored.
I'm really humbled to have this guest on the show today.
Whitney Kilgore is here. Hi, Whitney.
Hi, Holly, how are you? Long time no talk.
Long time no talk synchronously. We talk asynchronously
sometimes. That's true.
Yeah, well, I'm excited to have you here and you for you to tell
us about eye design and all the different projects that you've
been working on. But first tell us a little bit
about your story. How did you become the Co
founder? You know all the different
things that you're doing. Tell us your story because we
have a lot of people who are looking to transition into this
sector. Fantastic.
Thank you, Holly. Gosh, it's funny.
I remember using the phrase. Let me make a long story longer
go. I got into education kind of
accidentally and actually my entire career has been somewhat
the accidental step down the path.
But I was headed into Med school.
I thought for sure I was going to go into the world of medicine
and, and kind of a last minute made a change into education.
And it's been such a journey. I, you know, I've taught first
grade before I moved into higher education, in case anybody
didn't know. And I really enjoyed working
with six year olds. It was Absolutely Fabulous.
They're so creative in their imaginations.
And they just love life, right? As adults, we sometimes get in
our own way of finding joy. And so I'm, I'm reminded of that
occasionally, but, but after I spent some time in the 1st grade
classroom, I, I made the move into instructional technology
within a school district because of course, I had all of my
curriculum available online for my 6 year old's parent.
I mean, like it was the late 90s, early 2000s.
I just assumed that was normal. Yeah.
But I was the nerdy kid that went to computer camp when I was
12 and computers were brand new. So I've kind of always been on
that tech journey. I just didn't realize how much
those worlds would collide and I was recruited out of K12 into
higher Ed to a company called Sungard Higher Education, which
is now a Lucian, and they had a remote academic.
I didn't know that that's what it used to be called.
No, that's brand new information to me.
That's awesome. Wow.
So I was on a remote academic services team building online
degree programs in higher Ed way before it was cool.
I mean, it was probably 2005 when I made that leap and I got
the chance to go out to universities all over the US and
and help faculty understand how they could embrace the
affordances of the LMS in order for their students to have
opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise because they had
kids and jobs and, you know, couldn't make the track to.
Campus, all the things. Oh, the flexibility of an online
offering just absolutely was the sweet spot to allow them to
advance their careers. And so that's been the passion
project that I've been focused on for the last 20 years.
And that journey led me to a lot of places.
I worked on campus at the College of Southern Nevada out
in Las Vegas for a couple of years, and I was director of
academic technology out there, which also meant all classroom
technology and computer labs and, oh, by the way, the TV
studio and, you know. Whatever else they can add to
the. This falls under technology
category, right? Yes.
Events and video of everything, right.
So it was just it was quite the learning experience and then I
made made the trip back to Texas, right.
So I left South Texas to go on that journey to to Las Vegas.
But we had family here and children, little children that
really miss their grandparents. So we made the trek back to
Texas, which landed me at academic partnerships.
Which is not. I know we share that.
And I, I am so lucky that I had the opportunity to be a part of
building programs then globally, because I had the chance to
build programs in Beijing and Australia and the Philippines
and Spain and the UK and all over Latin America.
So it couldn't have asked for a better education all while
getting my doctorate at UNT. So I was doing that crazy
travel. And then I had all these
synchronous sessions that were at all times of the day and
night. I mean, if you've lived in the
central time zone, they were always at 7:00 PM, right?
But if you're in the UK, it's 3:00 AM, let's it's time for
class. So yeah, I learned about a lot
of things just by having those experiences in life.
And then one of my Co founders at at I design and I actually
worked together in academic partnerships way back in the
day. And when he was ready to start
the company, he asked me to go on the journey.
And I've never once hesitated or looked back.
This has been the adventure of a lifetime.
So oh. My God, I love your story so
much. It's just like it just like the
steps, like you're like in the classroom and then you're in
higher Ed and then you're going international and then you're
doing all these different things.
It's really a great journey. And I think the listeners really
appreciate the fact that as former educators, because I used
to teach high school, that we can make these journeys, that
these things are possible. And people don't realize how
much like we don't stay in one job anymore.
The career isn't 30 to 40 years in one position.
It's 30 to 40 years in various positions.
And hopefully you're, you're going higher and higher or just,
you know, following your passion.
So I really appreciate that about your journey.
And you know, The funny thing that I didn't share is I'm still
a haunted journey of like personal discovery to.
Yes. And the adventure that we're on
right now started about four years ago.
And I, I started out calling it scope creep.
We could, we got into yard work during the pandemic, like a lot
of people, right, right yard. And so we decided to buy a piece
of property, larger piece of property, and started planting
grapevines. And so my husband and I, every
night and every weekend for like 2 1/2 years, we were drilling
holes in the dirt and setting end posts and drilling tea posts
into the ground. And we now have a four acre
vineyard up in North Texas and grows 7 different varietals of
of grapes. And my husband is an assistant
winemaker in the Texas Hill Country and we have a little
winery here on property and. It's been.
Such a fun adventure. It's the joy thing I mentioned
earlier with first graders. I get now at this point in my
life to watch adults. Just pure unadulterated joy.
But it's adults now. Right, right, right.
No, we need that so much as adults.
I think we focus a lot on work and like paying bills and stuff,
but gosh, that is unbelievable. And I've watched your journey on
Facebook and like building your beautiful home and your vineyard
and all the things. And I'm like, that's what who I
want to be like when I grow up. How would it be like Whitney?
Because it's so it's so inspirational.
Like you have this great way of like balancing everything.
And I know sometimes people, especially listeners, can feel
like, Oh my God, I, I'm, I'm changing jobs or I'm having a
baby or I'm doing this and it's like it's super chaotic.
But it seems like you found like the right area personally and
then professionally and it's like all just coming together.
I love that feeling. I love it, so warm.
Fuzzy, you got to create your own balance, right?
And it's funny, what we're doing here doesn't feel like a side
hustle. It's like integrated into
everything that we do. The community that forms around
a vineyard is actually sort of interesting too.
So friends and neighbors offer all the time to help and to come
out and and work out in the vineyard.
So it's just, it's amazing. I think the the feeling that we
have such close knit friends now that want to spend time with us
out there digging in the dirt, right?
I have a neighbor, she says it's the best exercise ever.
And it's not like I have to have a gym membership.
Exactly, exactly. I can, I can imagine kind of
gracious, that's a lot of manual labor.
But one of the things I want to talk to you about is your
journey with eye design and you know, your Co founder, CEO, all
those different things like people who are transitioning
teachers, they see themselves and I've talked to a lot of
them. I'm sure you have too.
And you have a very large following out on LinkedIn.
I want to mention that as well. They feel like they have to jump
back into the basics, like they have to go back into this entry
level coming outside the classroom.
So I think one of the things I want to ask you is, as a former
educator, how did you feel initially stepping out of the
classroom? And what are some of the things
that you did to kind of elevate yourself or like deal with that
imposter syndrome? Because that's huge when you
come out of the classroom. Yeah, I think there's an
interesting, like fear of failure that comes over a lot of
us when we take that first plunge into a different pool,
right? And the, you know, the old
saying fake it till you make it is helpful at times, right?
But stage fright is real. I was actually on a podcast
yesterday and I had the gal who was asking the questions get so
nervous that she started sweating.
Just she was uncomfortable. It was her first time hosting a
podcast. And all of us can be
uncomfortable in certain situations.
And I think if you're willing to lean in to the chaos and the,
and the challenging situations that we find ourselves in,
sometimes those challenges come with great reward and
opportunity. So there's like this overcoming
fear piece, right? It's, I think we call it
imposter syndrome a lot, but it's really our own
physiological fear of success and I think we've all got to get
past that a little bit and I know that's easier said than
done. And if.
You let the steps that magically appear in front of you.
If you let yourself take those steps forward, you'd be
surprised where you'll end up. Yeah, taking the risk for sure.
I think it, you know, one of the things I kind of preach to
transitioning teachers is that they need to honor their
teaching experiences because they go out into the world
looking for a change in career. And then, you know, they're
working with resume reviewers or recruiters who have no idea
about teaching, let alone learning and development and how
that whole sector works. And they're telling teachers
don't put your teaching stuff on the resume, which really like
breaks my heart because I'm like, if you've been in teaching
for 15 to 20 years, you should really be looking for a senior
level position out in the L&D world.
You should not be erasing that from your history.
So it really bothers me when I talk to people and they're like,
Oh my gosh, the recruiter told me to take this off.
They're not going to like this. Like, how can you not honor what
a teacher does? I.
Also think with AI, there's an opportunity to let chat TPT or
Claude twink wink Claude who writes a little bit more
academically by the way, right? Claude is fantastic If you fed
up your resume and asked it to highlight the relevant
experiences that you've had as an educator related to that job
posting. I think the amount of leadership
that you could unpack as a teacher is tremendous, right?
Being able to keep 30, sometimes 30 students on the same page,
planning an entire lesson for them and and the cognitive
science aspects of what a teacher does.
Like, I think we we're under singing.
Is that the right thing? Yeah, we're kind of undersinging
ourselves when we when we write what our capabilities are.
So maybe that would help somebody get unstuck if they're
thinking about how to revamp their resume for a new position.
I agree AI, AI has totally changed the game when it comes
to transitioning roles and kind of updating your professional
materials. So tell us a little bit about I
Design for the audience that doesn't know or hasn't heard of
I Design. What do you do there and what
what's I design all about? Oh, Holly, thank you.
It is. It is an incredibly wonderful
organization. We've been in business 12 years.
Congratulations, that's amazing. But we've built so many programs
at this point, I've, I've kind of lost track of how many.
It's been hundreds of universities all over the US and
we have the largest domestic instructional design shop of, of
humans, right? Many of them were former
teachers too, and needed an entry point into instructional
design. But I think, you know, we've
partnered with universities to do programmatic design and to
make sure that the program vision, the outcomes that the
students are supposed to achieve, the what you want your
students to be able to say about their student experience.
All of that gets captured at the program level before we build a
single course so that we get a really cohesive student
experience across the program. And so that's been really
powerful from a creating student centered learning experiences
perspective while working with faculty that are using a
technology that might be new to them or teaching where, you
know, maybe all they did was during the pandemic remote
instruction. Right emergency remote teaching.
Emergency remote teaching. There you go.
Maybe they didn't embrace all the technology that they could
have leveraged in order to create synchronous and
asynchronous experiences for their students.
So we help with all of that, but that's just one pillar of the
business. Now when I look back 12 years
ago, I'm like, oh wow, that's where we started was
instructional design, but then we started with our nursing and
healthcare related programs solving a lot of challenges
throughout the years. So you may remember during the
pandemic finding clinical placement sites got really
tough. And so we have some institutions
where they, we were supporting their nursing programs all the
way from, you know, marketing and enrollment services through
to retention and coaching students and navigating higher
Ed. A lot of first Gen. folks,
right, going through programs. Well, we actually solved the
clinical placement problem too for our partner institutions.
And so that's been huge for them to be able to ensure that, you
know, when they've got 1000 nurses going through their
nursing programs, but there's a place for every single one of
those nurses to do their clinical activities.
So, yeah, so that's been really cool.
And then in the last four years or so, we built software.
So we have a curriculum mapping software tool that does
accreditation reporting with the push of a button and are now
using AI in instructional design in really thoughtful ways.
Still, from a programmatic view, it's not like an AI course
builder. It, you know, there's one of
those born every minute on the Internet now.
Yes, that's so true. Programmatic design that
leverages the power of AI and our own reusable design objects
and reusable build objects that make the process so much easier
and faster. But better, right?
Richer student experiences because of those reusable design
objects that we've created. So again, another fun journey to
be on is the evolution of iOS, which has been tremendous.
I love to hear it and I love to hear the fact that, and I
already knew this, that you're focused on the student
experience and you take it from the program level.
You're not just saying, OK, let's just start designing these
courses. You really take a look and
evaluate what's happening and what needs to change.
You know, that's all that just helps the students so much.
And in a sense of building community and the authenticness
and realness. You can have all the AI you
want, you know, but there's something to be said about the
human emotion and the human experience in these programs.
And like you said, there was a huge challenge during COVID, so
we had to figure out our way around that.
Like with the clinical stuff or just, you know, at the end, I
remember at the end of COVID, there's like an article that
came out like in the New York Times or something that said
online teaching failed or something like that.
And I'm like, you all don't even know what you're talking about.
I got so upset when I read that article.
I'm going to have to find it. But it was just like, this is
not what we're talking about when we're, we're considering
instructional design in the frameworks and the things that
we do on the back end of things. This is, you know, we literally
just said move this online, put this in the Google, you know,
the Google Classroom or whatever LMS you're using.
And that there wasn't thought or consideration behind how to do
that. It's kind of just when we call
it an emergency, that means it moved really fast.
It was triage to go online, which has its benefits but also
has some huge disadvantages too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you, you miss out as a student, right?
I mean, how many of us had children at home during the
pandemic, right? So I would I had AI had a
daughter that was in high school and while I'm working she's on
her computer having school right on Webex and so she's laying in
bed with her camera off and I don't know did she learn
anything. I feel terrible for those
younger students too. Trying to or teachers for
goodness sakes. Right?
Trying to hold the attention of a bunch of 6 year olds to go
back to my first grade days on Webex or Zoom for 45 minutes,
much less a whole day. I I really I can't imagine what
that felt like to be a teacher in that moment.
And I'm so grateful for all those educators that stuck it
out and still are in classrooms every day helping students be
better then they could be if they were sitting at home on
Webex or Zoom. Yeah, it was it was definitely
some tough times. And I know we learned a lot of
different lessons out of COVID and what to do and what not to
do. And I just think that people
really need to understand and like you're saying, give the
teachers grace, give the students grace 100%.
Like that was not what they were expecting.
Their expectations had to shift and shift very quickly.
And who knows, like when that hopefully doesn't happen again
with a Covic type situation. But what if something else
happens, especially if we think about local communities.
You're in Texas, tornadoes. I'm in Wilmington, there's
hurricanes. So when devastation or something
like that happens, like what do you do to make sure that people
still have access and that they're still able to learn and
be social? Like I think that's the one
thing I missed. It was so difficult to be stuck
inside the house and not I had to have a fever really bad.
Like I wasn't getting out there and talking to people.
It was, it was crazy. Yeah, yeah.
Aren't we glad those days are behind us now, though?
Yes, we're so glad. We're so glad I'm traumatized,
but we're so glad. But.
You're spot on when you start thinking about disaster
preparedness, right? Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to
that. When I was out at the College of
Southern Nevada, we were working on those plans.
What were we going to do in the event of an emergency, right?
So I think there are a lot of institutions that actually think
about online learning from that perspective.
And that's actually the wrong perspective to be thinking of it
from, right it. It shouldn't be an emergency
situation where you would consider online.
It should be to benefit your students for the greater good of
them, society, the institution. There's a lot of benefits to
making your educational experiences available in a
variety of formats. So but yeah, let's be forward
thinking and student centered. Yes, that's all.
That's what the future is now, you know, with all this, this AI
stuff, I'm, I'm excited about to see how this all integrates.
One of the things I want to ask you, since you have such a
wonderful career journey and like you've been in the
classroom, you've been in higher Ed, you, you own a business,
you're an entrepreneur inside, inside higher education and
outside higher education, you have your vineyard.
We have a lot of transitioning teachers or people who are just
looking to make a change that listen to the show.
So if you could give them like 3 pieces of advice about how to
transition out and, and what to do.
Like what are the ways that they can just just do it, Like make
the step, you know, overcome the, the fear that that kind of
thing. I want to hear your what your
three pieces of advice are. Yeah, I think let's see three
things. One, continue your education
like this journey in education begins and ends with learning.
Like you need to be a lifelong learner and you need to be
embracing the latest technologies and and advancing
your educational experiences. So I'd say keep learning.
It doesn't have to be for credit, it doesn't have to be
another degree, but some sort of learning experience should be a
part of your daily routine. Network.
LinkedIn is a great place to network with other people.
You think, Holly, I don't remember where I saw that you
were prepared or like you were presenting at a conference
overseas somewhere. And I was fascinated by your
post. I remember this very vividly.
And I wrote you and said, Oh my gosh, you're the kind of person
I really like to be around. Can we connect sometime and have
a coffee? And I think networking is where
some of the best connection points for all of us or is
found, whether it's virtual on LinkedIn or it's in real in the
real world. And then the other career advice
I would share is if you don't feel like the opportunity is
there for you to move up, then move over.
So and all, I mean career letter wise, if you're not where you
want to be yet, you may have to move to another organization or
entity, whether that's inside education or external in order
to continue your journey upward. So never feel like there's a
ceiling. Just feel like, you know, what
was that? Chutes and ladders, right?
But think mostly ladders. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Those are. That's great advice.
Very, very simple and actionable tips of things that you can do
right now if you're thinking about transitioning into a
different role or into the learning and development space,
Whitney is a great role model for that and how to do it.
So tell everyone in the audience where they can find you, where
they can connect with you, where they can see eye design stuff,
if they're interested in working with you.
Give us all. Yeah, so the I Design website is
I designedu.org. Check it out.
Lots of great stuff happening there.
If you're interested in learning more about our aligned software,
feel free to reach out to me. My e-mail is
whitney.kilgore@idesignedu.org. I'm happy to answer questions
about anything that we do. And if you're wanting to
network, you can catch me there or find me on LinkedIn.
I think my LinkedIn is Whitney Kilgore.
Yeah, on LinkedIn. So try to be as easy to find as
possible. And I love connecting people
with other people. So if you've got something
you're thinking about or excited about, you know, let me know how
how can I help you connect with others that might be able to
help you bring your dream to reality, your vision to reality.
Well, it's so great to to have had you on the show now and
reconnect with you. And I can say that you're
definitely one of the people I look up to when it comes to like
the journey in L&D. And so I appreciate all that you
share, all that you do. And the fact that you are first
grade teacher turned the CEO and the Co founder is an amazing
feat. You should be very proud of that
and I just love, I just love chatting with you.
It's just so easy and you really break it down into simple stuff
So what people can do. So thank you so much for coming
on the show and sharing your experience with our audience.
Thanks for having me on Holly, it was quite the adventure.
Yeah. Hi, we're Ice Spring, an
international team of e-learning enthusiasts who helped more than
60,000 clients across the globe succeed with better online
learning. Our two flagship solutions are
ispring Suite and ispringlearn LMS ispring Suite is an
intuitive all in one authoring tool for creating engaging
e-learning content, while ispringlearn is an innovative
online training platform for onboarding, upskilling, and
certifying your teams. We'd be happy to get to know you
and pick a solution that fits your needs best.
Go to www.ispringsolutions.com to learn more about us and
connect. Thanks for spending a few
minutes with Holly. She knows your podcast queue is
packed. If today's episode sparked an
idea or gave you that extra nudge of confidence, tap, follow
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and share your biggest take away.
She reads every message. Until next time, keep learning,
keep leading, and keep believing in your own story.
Talk soon.