Instructional Course: Building Stronger Virtual Teams
For this project, I was tasked with designing an instructional course on a topic of my choosing. I chose the topic "Building Stronger Virtual Teams." This course was designed using aspects of Bandura’s Social Learning Theory and Merrill’s Principles of Instructional Design.
Tools Used
Talent LMS, Articulate Rise, Microsoft Word, Padlet, Canva
Time Spent
This was developed over the span of 11 weeks. I spent roughly 2-3 hours per week.
Project Overview
Building Stronger Virtual Teams is a self-paced professional development course I designed in TalentLMS to help learners strengthen trust, engagement, and collaboration in remote and hybrid environments. The course combines research-based communication strategies, authentic simulations, and reflective activities to guide learners in applying effective team-building and leadership techniques in their own workplace settings.
Design Process
I structured the course around four cohesive modules:
Communication Strategies in Remote Settings: Introduces key communication concepts through the TEDx talk, The Art of Communicating Effectively for Hybrid and Online Work.
Building Engagement in Virtual Teams: Features the article "Effective Engagement Strategies for Management to Increase Job Satisfaction Within Virtual Teams," accompanied by guided questions and a reflection activity.
Virtual Team-Building Practices: Includes a fully interactive branching scenario I created in Articulate Rise (“The Virtual Meeting Dilemma”) and a simulated Zoom team-building assignment.
Action Planning- Applying What You’ve Learned: Concludes with a downloadable Action Plan template and summative project guiding learners to apply their chosen strategies in professional contexts.
Instructional Design Highlights
Developed original course content for each unit, ensuring it functions as a complete, stand-alone learning experience.
Designed a custom Rise branching scenario, color-matched to the TalentLMS course theme for aesthetic and cognitive consistency.
Integrated interactive knowledge checks, reflections, and peer discussions to promote active learning and social engagement.
Applied Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction and Social Learning Theory to support practice, feedback, and collaboration.
Ensured accessibility with captioned videos, transcripts, and downloadable PDFs for all key resources.
Reflection
This project allowed me to bring theory to life through authentic application. I went beyond the project requirements to include real instructional content, interactive practice, and accessible design, ultimately creating a course that someone could actually take and learn from. The process reinforced my belief that strong instructional design blends structure with creativity, and that the most effective learning experiences are those that feel both intuitive and meaningful to the learner.
See the completed course below!
Click play to view a walk through of the course
Want to see it in action?
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