I’m Kelly Watson, an instructional designer based in Chicago. I completed my M.Ed. in Instructional Design and Educational Technology at the American College of Education with a focus on both adult and K-12 education. I design accessible, learner-centered instruction, from full LMS courses to interactive activities, instructional video, and job aids.
For the past five years I’ve taught English and Journalism, most recently at William Howard Taft High School, an International Baccalaureate World School and one of Chicago’s largest public high schools, with over 4,000 students. As Yearbook Adviser, I turned around a financially struggling program, growing sales 35% over two years and generating over $120,000 in annual revenue through targeted marketing and audience segmentation. Running that program also meant training the people who produce it, so I built a six-week onboarding curriculum for incoming senior editors, using ADDIE and adult learning principles to take them from foundational training to publication-ready work.
I also designed the student facing materials and assessment for Taft’s IB Interdisciplinary Unit (IDU), which integrates four core subjects across the entire sophomore class. It is the first IDU in the world to span a full high school grade level. After building the unit, I led its professional development rollout to our 10th-grade TCT, and I continue to coach colleagues on technology integration and assessment alignment.
My M.Ed. work grew out of a problem in my own classroom. My 10th grade learners are all preparing to take IB Language and Literature. Every student within the school must take the Language and Literature course, even if they’re not on the IBDP/CP track. Many students preparing for the IB Diploma Programme’s Language and Literature course struggle with the higher-order, global, and contextual thinking it demands. To close that gap, I designed and built Exploring IB-Thought through Text, a three-module asynchronous course in Google Classroom that introduces the concepts and analytical processes IBDP coursework relies on. For that course I developed an interactive Genially activity, an animated instructional video, and a reference toolkit tested against WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards. I evaluated all of them with a QA checklist I created during the program.
Designing for both teenagers and adult colleagues has shown me that the audience changes how I design while my process stays the same. Whether the learner is a sophomore or a new editor, I start with who they are, what they already know, and what they need to be able to do. I’m now bringing that process to instructional design roles in corporate learning and development, edtech, and adult education.
Education and Credentials
- M.Ed., Instructional Design and Educational Technology, American College of Education (2026), 4.0 GPA
- B.A., English, minors in Secondary Education and History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2022), 3.8 GPA, Dean’s List
- International Baccalaureate Certification, Category 2 (2023)
- Illinois Professional Educator License, Grades 9–12, English Language Arts and Social Sciences
Skills and Tools
- Design methods: ADDIE, SAM, SAMR, UDL, Backward Design, Failure-Based Learning, Grow’s Staged Model, Connectivism, Mayer’s multimedia principles, needs analysis, storyboarding and scripting, assessment design
- Accessibility & QA: WCAG 2.1, Grackle Docs, screen reader testing, QA review
- Tools: Canvas, Articulate Storyline, Google Classroom, Google Workspace, Genially, Canva, CapCut, Kami, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft 365, Excel, PowerPoint, Yearbook Avenue
Resume
Contact
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyawatson3
Email: Kellyawatson3@gmail.com
