Notice
Find the oversimplified idea: completion as proof, content as coverage, polish as quality, or AI output without judgment.
Perspectives
The next stage of your career requires more than knowing how to build.
This is where I work through the questions that keep coming up in learning design. Why do we jump to courses? What should AI actually help with? How do we know our work made a difference? Come for a point of view, stay for the practical ideas you can take back to work.
38published
0in the lab
7argument lanes
Find your argument · 20 seconds
What are you wrestling with?
Editorial position
Where I name the argument first.
Every Perspective starts with a problem I recognize from the work, challenges the assumption underneath it, and turns that thinking into a move you can actually use.
Challenge
Question the default shape. Ask whether the real answer is a course, a system, a tool, a workflow, or support in the moment.
Translate
Turn the argument into a method a working learning designer can actually pick up and use.
Argument library
Read the thinking by problem or lane.
38Showing all perspectives
Published · 6 min read
AI + Design JudgmentAI Won't Replace Instructional Designers. But It Will Replace Some Instructional Design Work.
AI is not eliminating the need for instructional designers. It is exposing which parts of the job were production tasks all along.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
AI + Design JudgmentStop Using AI to Make Courses Faster
Using AI to accelerate the same course-first process gives you more output, not necessarily better performance.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Learning SystemsThe LMS Isn't Dead. But It's No Longer the Center of Learning.
The LMS still matters for assignment, records, and compliance. It fails when we ask it to become the front door to every moment of support.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Performance SupportPerformance Support vs. Training: How to Know Which One You Actually Need
Training builds capability before the moment of performance. Performance support helps someone act during it. The right answer depends on the work.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
AI + Design JudgmentAI Agents Are Coming to L&D. Here's What They Should Actually Do.
Useful L&D agents should reduce friction around decisions, evidence, and workflow support instead of becoming another chatbot nobody needs.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
AI + Design JudgmentInstructional Designers Need Better Judgment, Not Better Prompts
Prompt technique changes quickly. Judgment is what helps a designer decide what to ask, what to trust, and what to build.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
AI + Design JudgmentWhy Prompt Engineering Is a Terrible Long-Term L&D Strategy
Prompt engineering can improve today's output. It is too fragile and tool-dependent to become the foundation of an L&D strategy.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Learning SystemsThe Rise of the Learning Systems Designer
The learning systems designer connects courses, support, tools, managers, data, and workflow into an environment where performance can improve.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Performance + JudgmentWhat Should Employees Actually Learn When AI Can Look Everything Up?
When information is instantly available, learning should focus more on mental models, judgment, practice, and knowing when the answer cannot be trusted.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Product-Minded LearningYour Learning Strategy Has a Content Problem
Many learning strategies keep adding assets without deciding what deserves maintenance, retirement, connection, or a clear moment of use.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
AI + Human CapabilityAI Makes Human Skills More Important, Not Less
As AI handles more routine production, the value of empathy, facilitation, judgment, influence, and sensemaking becomes easier to see.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Performance SupportLearning in the Flow of Work Is Finally Becoming Real
Embedded guidance, AI assistance, and connected tools can bring support into the workflow, but only when the experience is designed around the task.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Performance SupportThe Course Is Becoming the Exception, Not the Default
Courses still matter, but they should be chosen because sustained practice and structured learning are necessary, not because L&D needs an artifact.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
Learning SystemsTraining Cannot Fix a Broken Workflow
When tools, incentives, or the environment make good performance difficult, another course only teaches people how the system wishes work happened.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
Evaluation + EvidenceCompletion Is Not Evidence
A completion rate tells you that people reached the end. It does not tell you whether they can perform, whether behavior changed, or whether the business problem moved.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
AI + Design JudgmentAI Makes Bad Learning Faster Too
AI accelerates outlines, scenarios, quizzes, visuals, and production. It can also turn a weak assumption into a finished course before anyone challenges it.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
Product-Minded LearningYour Learners Do Not Need Another Portal
When support lives far away from the work, people stop hunting for it. Design resources around the moment of need, not the organization chart.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
Performance SupportThe Best Job Aid Is the One People Can Find
A beautiful job aid is useless when workers cannot locate it, trust it, or use it quickly inside the real workflow.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
SME + Stakeholder PracticeSMEs Should Review Decisions, Not Decoration
When experts review a polished course, feedback drifts toward wording, colors, and preference. Give them the decisions only they can validate.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
Product-Minded LearningLaunch Is the Beginning, Not the Finish
Learning teams often treat release day as completion. Product-minded learning uses launch to begin observing, improving, and supporting the experience.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
Design JudgmentIf Everything Is Priority, Nothing Is Designed
Learning becomes bloated when every stakeholder request is equally important. Design requires hierarchy, tradeoffs, and the courage to cut.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Learner ContextDesign for the Learner Who Actually Shows Up
Learners bring anxiety, past experiences, interruptions, and uncertainty. Use a five-question learner-context review to reduce avoidable friction without lowering the standard.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
Product-Minded LearningYour Instructional Design Portfolio Needs a Chain of Evidence
A finished sample shows what you built. A chain of evidence shows how you investigated the problem, chose a response, tested it, and understood its limits.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
Feedback + CoachingA Scenario Is Only as Good as the Decision It Practices
A story and three choices can still test answer recognition. Use a decision audit to examine the cues, information, tradeoffs, and feedback your scenario actually provides.
Read the essayPublished · 5 min read
Learning SystemsStakeholder Review Should Resolve Decisions
Open-ended requests for feedback invite conflicting edits. Give each review a decision, an evidence standard, and an owner who can resolve disagreement.
Read the essayPublished · 8 min read
AI + Design JudgmentPrompt Writing Is Becoming a Learning Design Skill
Prompting is not just a technical trick. For learning designers it is becoming a way to clarify intent, constraints, learner needs, and judgment before generating output.
Read the essayPublished · 8 min read
Learning SystemsYour SME Gave You 74 Slides. Now What?
A content dump is not a learning plan. Use five buckets to decide what should be taught, practiced, supported, referenced, or cut before you start building.
Read the essayPublished · 13 min read
Product-Minded LearningLearning Design Is Not a Beauty Contest
Visual polish can attract attention, but it cannot prove that a learning solution addresses the right problem. Use the five-question beauty contest test to examine what the work helps people do, what is blocking performance, and what evidence would show improvement.
Read the essayPublished · 8 min read
AI + Design JudgmentAI Can Build the Course. That Was Never the Hardest Part.
AI can generate nearly every visible part of a course. The harder and more valuable work is deciding whether a course is the right response to the real performance problem.
Read the essayPublished · 8 min read
Learning SystemsEvery New Course Creates Content Debt
Adding another course without a plan for ownership, review, consolidation, and retirement makes the learning library harder to navigate, maintain, and trust.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Product-Minded LearningStop Asking How Long the Course Should Be
Course length is usually the wrong starting point. Before deciding five minutes or sixty, clarify what people need to do differently when the experience is over.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Product-Minded LearningLearning Works Better When We Design It Like a Product
Learning works better when it is treated less like a one-time deliverable and more like a living product experience built around usability, support, maintenance, and real work.
Read the essayPublished · 6 min read
Product-Minded LearningLearning Designers Need to Think Like Marketers
Launch is not the finish line. Learning designers should borrow the marketer's instinct for journeys, repeated touchpoints, reinforcement, and what brings people back after the first interaction.
Read the essayPublished · 7 min read
Memory + BehaviorDesigning for Forgetting
Learning design has to account for forgetting. If people need to remember, decide, or act later, the experience needs retrieval, reinforcement, and support beyond first exposure.
Read the essayPublished · 8 min read
Feedback + CoachingLearner Feedback Should Coach, Not Grade
Correct and incorrect are not enough when the goal is better judgment. Feedback should help learners understand what happened, what they missed, and what to try next.
Read the essayPublished · 7 min read
Learning SystemsLearning Experiences Are Systems, Not Events
A course can be part of the system, but it should not be mistaken for the whole strategy. Better design considers practice, support, manager behavior, tools, feedback, and evidence.
Read the essayPublished · 7 min read
Adult LearningIf We Can't Define Our Own Discipline, We Have a Bigger Problem
Pedagogy and andragogy are not interchangeable. Understanding the distinction is foundational, but modern workplace learning must ultimately be designed for performance, not just instruction.
Read the essayPublished · 8 min read
Evaluation + EvidenceKirkpatrick Fails When We Use It Too Late
Evaluation fails when treated like a post-launch reporting ritual. Better evidence starts while the problem, behavior, and system are still being defined.
Read the essayPerspective lanes
The recurring arguments behind the Lab.
Learning is not an event. It is a system of practice, feedback, tools, support, and evidence.
Measurement works better when it starts before launch, not after the course is already built.
Retention needs retrieval, reinforcement, transfer, and support at the moment of need.
Feedback should help learners reason, recover, and improve, not just reveal whether they were right.
AI can accelerate output, but judgment determines whether the learning actually works.
Learning should be designed with usability, iteration, evidence, and real workflow behavior in mind.
From argument to action
An argument is only useful once you do something with it.
Perspectives name the argument. The Lab helps you pressure-test the thinking, design the response, and put it to work.
ReadPerspectivesName the argument
ChallengeThe LabPressure-test the argument
ApplyThe LabDesign the response
Learning, Rewired · the cadence
Get each new argument the week it’s written.
Learning, Rewired is the LinkedIn newsletter version of this thinking. A newsletter issue can grow into a Perspective, and a Perspective can become a newsletter issue: the same arguments, moving back and forth between the two.
Next issue in the worksNew arguments, roughly every two weeks
Learning Rewired Lab
Better learning work starts with seeing the problem differently.
Use the thinking to challenge the default, make a stronger decision, and build what the work actually needs.
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