I design and build learning experiences, grounded in pedagogy, delivered as a live product.
Equally comfortable leading a project solo or slotting into an existing team's workflow.
10+ years teaching and designing for adult learners, now building the products that deliver that learning end to end: pedagogy, development, hosting, payments, and launch. Based in Limache, Chile, working remotely.
Design skills and the technical range to build with them.
Four areas that work together on every project: the pedagogy, the build, the production, and the classroom experience behind it all.
Instructional Design
- Articulate Storyline 360 (advanced)
- ADDIE, Gagné, Bloom's, Kolb & Mayer's principles
- SCORM / xAPI / cmi5
- Gamification & branching scenarios
- SME collaboration & AI-augmented design workflows (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Miro Sidekick)
Creative Direction & Production
- Concept & narrative development
- Canva Pro, CapCut Pro & Vyond animation
- AI image, video & music generation
- Brand identity & social launch campaigns
Technical
- HTML / CSS / JavaScript
- WordPress, WooCommerce & PWA delivery
- Fast, independent adoption of new tools and platforms
Teaching & Learning Design
- Adult learning & andragogy
- Curriculum development & needs analysis
- Learner-centered lesson design
- CELTA qualified (ESL/EFL specialism)
- 10+ years experience
VOWL: a gamified English course, designed, built, and launched independently.
Not a prototype. A live product with real payments, real learners, and a real launch.
English World Tour: Australia
vowl.me · English Learning. Reimagined.
Problem
Gamification in language learning usually sits on the surface (points, streaks, decoration) while the content underneath stays flat. It looks playful, but it doesn't change how well someone learns.
Solution
VOWL builds the game into the pedagogy itself: difficulty tiers mapped to real CEFR bands, medals and progress tied to actual comprehension checkpoints, and bonus stages that reward mastery, not just clicks.
Design decisions
Built mobile-first around a road-trip narrative through Australia. Each difficulty tier maps to a CEFR band (Easy: A2–low B1, Medium: B1–B2, Hard: high B2–C1), and every module loops learners through the full Bloom's Taxonomy cycle, from Recall through Create, at that tier's level of complexity, so progression is pedagogically grounded, not just a UI setting.
Gamification elements
Speed Match vocabulary, arcade and reaction games, cryptic puzzles, branching scenarios, a campfire-themed speaking activity for low-stakes conversation practice, and a JavaScript-driven writing review that gives instant grammar feedback, all layered with medals, a progress bar, and bonus challenge stages I designed.
Module structure
The live Australia module follows Kolb's experiential learning cycle: a concrete-experience stage (video, audio, or interactive scenario, depending on the content), reflective comprehension checks, scaffolded grammar and vocabulary, then active experimentation through role-play and branching scenarios: the same structure planned for each country as the World Tour expands.
Creative direction & production
Co-developed the road-trip and noir-detective concepts, then took each through full creative direction: narrative structure, visual style, and VOWL's brand identity system. Video and animation work is guided by Mayer's multimedia principles, Gagné's events of instruction, and the C.R.A.P. model for visual design.
Currently expanding with free microlearning content to build engagement ahead of a planned move to a subscription model.
Excerpted from a 101-page Professional Diploma project in Digital Learning Design (Distinction). full project available here.
From the classroom to the codebase.
I started as a classroom teacher (CELTA qualified, 10+ years in), most recently with EF Teach Online and Red ELT, delivering live, facilitated 1:1 and group instruction alongside the self-paced digital courses I design, and kept running into the same wall: good pedagogy dying in the handoff between designer and developer.
So I stopped handing it off. VOWL is what happens when the same person who understands how adults actually learn a language also builds and hosts the product that teaches it, and produces the video, animation, voice, and brand identity work that's usually split across multiple specialist hires. I'm not choosing between instructional design, development, and creative production: I do all three, on purpose, because I've seen how much pedagogy gets lost when those three things sit with three different people.
That "how people actually learn" question also led me through a year of CPD study with the Digital Learning Institute (courses in cognitive science, working memory, and motivation) that gave me a more rigorous basis for VOWL's gamification decisions, from difficulty tiering to why the pronunciation activities are structured the way they are.
VOWL's raw content (dialogues, vocabulary, exam-style material) comes from my co-founder, who acts as subject matter expert. Translating that into structured, gamified instructional design, tiering it to CEFR bands and building it into branching scenarios and assessment logic, is my part of the process. That SME-to-instructional-design translation is core to how instructional design actually works day to day, and it's one I get real, ongoing practice at.
That instinct for what a learner actually needs comes from a genuinely varied teaching background: classrooms in Chile, Edinburgh, and Spain, plus online teaching that started with iTutorGroup (students in China, Japan, and Taiwan) and continues today with EF Teach Online, which connects me with students from every corner of the world. The contexts have ranged just as widely, from general adult ESL to corporate Business English, medical English, and IELTS/Cambridge exam preparation, including a headhunted role at Eclass designing and delivering a custom executive course for a Vice President-level client at Finning, a major mining equipment supplier. That range is where the needs-analysis instinct behind VOWL's tiering and content decisions actually comes from: lived classroom experience, not just theory.
- LocationLimache, Chile, working remotely
- BackgroundScottish, native English speaker
- QualificationCELTA certified · Digital Learning Design diploma (Distinction)
- CPD study5 selected micro-credentials (of 18 completed) with the Digital Learning Institute: How Does Your Brain Learn, Cognitive Science for Digital Learning, Working Memory for Digital Learning, How to Motivate & Engage, LX Design for Immersive Learning. View all 18 →
- Experience10+ years ESL teaching
- Current rolesEF Teach Online · Red ELT · VOWL co-founder
- FocusNeuroscience-informed, gamified ESL curriculum design
What I can take off your plate.
From a single interactive module to a full commercial course, built and launched.
Instructional design in Storyline 360
Branching scenarios, custom JavaScript interactions, xAPI-tracked activities.
End-to-end course development
From concept and pedagogy through build, hosting, and launch: one point of contact.
Curriculum & instructional design
ADDIE, Bloom's, and CEFR-aligned content design grounded in how adult learners actually acquire new skills, in ESL and beyond.
Gamified learning design
Difficulty tiering, progress systems, and mechanics that drive retention, not just engagement.
E-learning technical development
PWA delivery, payment integration, and hosting: the technical layer that makes a course a real, sellable product.
AI-augmented instructional design
Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Miro Sidekick built into the workflow for rapid storyboarding, needs analysis, and assessment drafting, always reviewed and refined against the instructional design principles behind the course.
Looking for someone who can design it and build it?
I'm open to remote instructional design and learning experience roles, freelance projects, and collaborations.
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