Victor Manuel Iglesias

The problem: A high-enrollment program needs many courses that feel like one program, and students need to see how each week connects to what the course promises.

My role: As an Instructional Design Specialist for the College of Business, I led the PMBAO master template and its program builds.

The design move: Module pages open with the course-level objectives, the weekly objectives mapped to them, and a short statement of how the materials support those objectives, so the alignment is visible to students and not only to reviewers.

Reflection: Constructive alignment works when students can see it. Writing the objective map into every module made gaps visible while we built, instead of during review.

The problem: Online graduate students arrive from full-time jobs and different backgrounds, and they need the program’s people, expectations, and tools before coursework starts.

My role: I led the orientation module and course shells for the MSLSCM program.

The design move: The orientation follows a new student’s first steps in order: welcome messages from the program director and the dean, then the course list and schedule, then resources.

Reflection: Scaffolding starts before the first lesson. Ordering the orientation by what a new student needs first, people, then plan, then tools, gives every student the same clear first step into the program.

The problem: Students preparing for clinical therapy work needed to experience a multisensory room, a space many of them could not visit in person.

My role: I designed and produced the walkthrough in CenarioVR, capturing the room’s calming and stimulating settings.

The design move: Students move through the room and its sensory settings themselves instead of reading a description of them.

Reflection: Experiential learning needs an experience to reflect on. Because the subject was a place and a set of sensations, a 360° walkthrough could teach what a written description could not, which is the only time immersive media earns its cost.

The problem: Checking hundreds of course documents for missing alt text by hand was slow and easy to get wrong, and every miss blocked students who use screen readers.

My role: I built Alt-Scan in Python and presented it at the FIU Online ID Expo 2025.

The design move: It scans PDF, DOCX, and PPTX files and reports each image without alt text by file and page, so fixes happen before a course opens.

Reflection: Universal Design for Learning asks for access from the start, not as a repair. Accessibility sticks when the check is easier than skipping it, and a tool changes that habit faster than a reminder does.

The problem: Students and faculty talk about learning styles as fixed types, a myth the research does not support.

My role: I designed and built it end to end.

The design move: Nine everyday scenarios return a profile across four preferences, with study and teaching moves for each and a plain caution, grounded in Pashler and colleagues (2008), that a preference is a starting point and not a prescription.

Reflection: Kolb’s cycle is about moving through every mode, so the instrument had to widen what people try instead of handing them a label. The caution took more design work than the questions did.

The problem: Unclear rubrics and inconsistent question banks make grades harder to defend and harder for students to understand.

My role: I designed and led the sessions, including “Building and Managing Rubrics in Canvas” and a cohort for College of Business faculty.

The design move: Each session works through the choices faculty actually make in Canvas: writing criteria students can read, attaching rubrics to assignments, and building reliable question banks and quizzes.

Reflection: Transparent assessment helps students only if faculty adopt it. Faculty take up a method when it saves them time and backs up their grades, so I led with that and let the theory follow.

The problem: Online courses slide easily into content delivery, where students watch and read but rarely do anything with what they learn.

My role: I wrote the series for FIU Online Insider. The first part was published September 19, 2024.

The design move: I turned active-learning practice into moves faculty can use the same week, from the foundations of student engagement to designing engaging content.

Reflection: Active learning asks students to practice, decide, and explain. Writing the series asked the same of me: if I could not explain a move to faculty in a paragraph, I did not really own it.