Examples of learning design in practice

Funded Research:
Exploring the impact of coaching on retaining early career teachers (digital tools focus)

In 2025, Cotton Education Services funded a research project that explores how digitally enabled coaching can strengthen support for early career teachers and improve teacher retention, with an emphasis on remote and regional teachers’ experiences. Read more and sample our course here.

 

Re-Vitalising
an Induction Event

The Graduate Research School requested Cotton Education Services design a more interactive student induction experience. Read more about our work on redesigning and shooting an induction video.

HDR Awards

 

The Graduate Research School of the University of Technology Sydney asked our learning designers to create a new awards events in 2024. Read about the journey of creating the event and community and how it has continued into 2025.

 

Data Capabilities Training

As part of UTS’s 2023–34 Digital Literacy and Engagement initiative, CES was engaged to design and develop online learning modules to strengthen data literacy and governance practices across the university. The goal was to ensure that all UTS staff understand their responsibilities in managing data securely and effectively, in alignment with the university’s Data Capability Framework.

Read more here about the learning modules, and here about the five year plan we developed for UTS’s 30 000 employees.

UTS RES Hub

 

The University of Technology, Sydney, was seeking in 2020 to broaden its asynchronous, online professional learning offerings.

These courses are constructed using Canvas, H5P, and Genial.ly. We liaised directly with subject matter experts to create interactive, engaging and professional learning opportunities for the UTS academic and staff community.

Discover more about The IEU Zone ✌️ - Personalized

 

The IEU Zone was built in 2018 to service over 32 000 members of the Independent Education Union of Australia, NSW/ACT Branch.

The site offers engaging and teaching standards aligned professional development opportunities for a diverse and geographically isolated membership. The creation of the site was focussed on community building in order to bring isolated members together to create a feeling of shared purpose and experience. The site is also a repository of resources for members.

 

In 2017, I was the Project Director for the creation and maintenance of www.crtpd.com. The professional development project was sponsored by the Department of Education and Training, Victoria, and implemented by Teacher Learning Network. The program included 45 online synchronous events, 10 face-to-face events in regional Victoria and the new website supported an on-demand, asynchronous professional development platform.

For this project I was responsible for:

  • creation and maintenance of the website

  • creation and maintenance of the online booking system and participant support (email and phone)

  • facilitation of stakeholder and network consultation, meetings and feedback sessions

  • budgeting and reconciliation reports

  • grant application and reporting

  • evaluation, survey and reporting processes

  • presenter/talent booking, negotiations and support

  • on-camera hosting and facilitation of digital and face-to-face presentations

My involvement in the CRTPD project was as a fixed term contract. Within one month, the whole program was set and website made, and throughout the ten month period it served 3731 participants across the state of Victoria, Australia.

Investigating Ötzi


 

Investigating Ötzi was created in 2020 to be an interactive game for students studying the New South Wales (Australian) history syllabus.

The technology has since moved on, and graphic design has become easier within H5P as a tool, but the general principles of choose your own adventure learning as well as student agency in investigating are present in this older example of practice.

The learning experience focusses on building decision making capabilities in the students, using a gamification strategy to create real consequence for the student when they make a choice in handling artefacts.

You can press ‘play’ on the image below of the Alps to play the game. Trigger warning: several images of the mummified body are included and may not be appropriate to all viewers.