About

My work sits at the intersection of AI innovation, learning experience design, and higher education. I’m a learning experience designer and strategist grounded in learning science and design thinking, with more than 20 years applying that method to learning and innovation problems and closing the gap between learning and real-world practice, focused on where AI takes learning next.

I hold a master’s in Educational Technology with an adult online learning emphasis, which I earned online as a working adult myself. My graduate research was on personal learning environments, learning built around the individual learner and their own network of tools, people, and goals, and that thread runs straight into what I am researching now: simulation-based, authentic online assessment, where instead of taking a test a learner performs a real task to prove they can do the work. My path ran through UX and design, product management at an EdTech startup, and directing instructional technology at my campus’s Innovation Center, before I moved into full-time teaching and served as a faculty program director for over a decade. I’m a League for Innovation AI Fellow.

AI is the biggest shift learning has seen, and I am all in. I build with frontier tools every day, on weekends for fun and for personal projects, because this is not a side interest, it is how I think now. What most AI experimentation skips is the learning science, and that is what I bring: I design agentic tools that act for students, keep a human in the loop, and test for efficacy before anything scales, measured by learning and retention, not features shipped. I care most about where this goes next, as content grows abundant and judgment becomes the scarce skill, and I build toward that. The projects here show the work.

Under the build is real learning experience design: I align activities and assessment to measurable outcomes, design for competency over seat time, and favor authentic work over tests, grounded in adult learning theory. Accessibility is built into everything I make, held to WCAG and ADA standards from the first draft, and I review other faculty’s courses for it as a Quality Matters and OLC/OSCQR reviewer. I led my campus’s LMS team and co-chaired the district’s eLearning Advisory Group, and running pilots is a throughline: I test new tools for real and scale what works, from learning platforms to AI. The learners I design for are mostly working adults balancing jobs, family, and school, and they are the audience I know best.

My biggest effort is a student-journey study across my district’s ten colleges and roughly 140,000 students, my League AI Fellows project: original research mapping where students hit friction and where emerging AI could change the trajectory. I co-chair a Student Support and Success domain on the district’s AI Resource Committee, lead a campus AI community of practice, run AI workshops for colleagues, and present this work at conferences.

Experiential learning ties it all together, and it points to where assessment is going: authentic, scenario-based work over tests and discussion boards. This fall I am building an AI-simulated client into my branding course, one students consult throughout for feedback while their design decisions stay theirs, making the assessment itself a simulation, and my goal is to extend that toward immersive simulation in our new campus XR lab. I run an internship program and lead studio projects with real campus clients, often paid, from murals and branding to promotional videos, and I’ve been recognized for my open educational resources work.

Reach me at michelleblomberg@gmail.com, or explore the work.