ABOUT ME

Lani's passion for creating immersive and effective learning experiences is truly inspiring. In her role at Stanford CME, Lani's expertise converges at the intersection of education, technology, and medicine. Utilizing her extensive knowledge and skills as a researcher, instructional designer, and eLearning developer, she pioneers innovative and impactful medical education initiatives that benefit clinicians and healthcare professionals on a global scale.

Two of Lani's recent eLearning projects that are published and available on the Stanford CME website demonstrate her expertise and innovation in instructional design. The first project, titled "Online MedEd Made Easy," is an engaging eLearning course that teaches medical educators how to produce exciting educational animations and explainer videos in medical education. It will soon be offered on the Stanford Training and Registration System, available to all Stanford employees. This course showcases Lani's ability to create immersive learning experiences while promoting effective educational practices.

Another notable project is the eLearning course "ChatGPT for MedEd Innovators," which Lani developed to teach clinicians and healthcare professionals about the application of ChatGPT in the field of medical education. This course equips learners with the skills to write effective prompts, generate high-quality content, and incorporate ChatGPT into course design. By creating this course, Lani has showcased Stanford CME's expertise in leveraging innovative technologies to enhance learning experiences.

In addition to her eLearning projects, Lani supports our course directors in improving the quality and engagement of live courses and events. Her contribution in creating a multimedia guide of best practices for using interactive elements in educational content serves as a valuable resource for our team and is being utilized during the onboarding of student interns.

Additionally, Lani has demonstrated her versatility by assisting in organizing and executing live webinars, as well as contributing to grant writing efforts. Her involvement in these activities reflects her dedication to the success of our programs and her commitment to advancing learning and education. Her passion, expertise, and dedication to advancing learning and education make her a true asset to the field.

Lani consistently went above and beyond, creating the training materials to onboard me as an instructional design intern. She was exceptionally hands-on in her training approach. Lani dedicated the time to personally train and mentor me in all of the practical aspects of instructional design, familiarizing me with the intricacies of eLearning course authoring tools (Articulate Rise and Storyline), Learning Management Systems (Canvas LMS), and graphic design tools (Canva), ensuring I had the skills and proficiency needed to create the highest quality learning experiences. She consistently provided clear and comprehensive project instructions that ensured a deep understanding of each project’s purpose, requirements, the expected level of quality, available tools, channels for seeking clarification or assistance, and always-prompt response times. She not only facilitated a smooth workflow but also fostered a sense of support and collaboration. The consistent quality of project directives greatly enhanced my ability to excel in my role, enabling me to consistently deliver high-quality work. Lani's commitment to clarity and precision greatly contributed to our success, and I’d never felt more proud of my work.

Lani’s outstanding contributions and accomplishments to purposefully marry aspects of design, teaching, learning, community, and connectivity have had a substantial impact across numerous settings. Additionally, as a first-generation college graduate, Lani is very passionate about higher education and contributing back to the community, and her record of accomplishment in this regard is also laudable. 

I have had the pleasure of knowing Lani since she was a Master’s and credential candidate in the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP). Lani was a thoughtful, wise, warm, and accomplished student, exceeding all the requirements of STEP’s intensive and challenging academic and practice-based curriculum. During her time in STEP, Lani put much thought, time, and effort into preparing for her classes and supporting her students in her clinical placements. Lani was a curious learner and committed educator, with a passion for and commitment to issues of equity and justice. Moreover, Lani was a valuable citizen of the community in STEP. From her time in STEP, Lani was actively and creatively bringing her design talents to the work of teaching and learning – offering creative design approaches to lesson plans, material and resources, concept mapping of key readings, and more. I still draw upon some of Lani’s beautiful and creative handiwork in demonstrating key ideas in the STEP context.

I continue to know Lani’s work best in the educational setting. For example, she has been a wonderful contributor to our annual STEP alumni conference where she has collaborated with her peers to shape professional learning opportunities for practicing teaching. In 2022, in response to the impact of the global pandemic, Lani and one of her colleagues designed a learning session around “Heart Work” to bring creative planning and design to the writing space as a tool for processing challenging events and making space for both grief and joy, distinct but necessary ingredients for healing, resistance, and repair. This month, Lani again offered meaningful learning experiences for her STEP community around the concepts of instructional design and their utility for educators across various settings. In addition to her work organizing and presenting at the annual conference, she has recently taken over redesigning, creating multimedia content, and managing our official STEP social media account.

Needless to say, Lani’s talents and accomplishments are laudable and impressive. Beyond the remarkable nature of her professional achievements, Lani is a passionate, thoughtful, generous, and collaborative community member. She is a champion for care, wellness, and justice. 

I worked closely with Lani as an undergraduate and found her to be brilliant, passionate for learning and teaching, a relentless advocate for the marginalized, dedicated, serious in purpose, committed, thoughtful, persistent, and creative. Lani completed her higher education in two years, finishing at the age of 19. She accomplished this due to her extraordinary intelligence and drive, dating back to high school when she simultaneously enrolled in two years of university science courses to get a head start on her college degree. I have gotten to know Lani best through her work in my lab. I seldom take students on as undergraduate researchers straight out of high school, but I made an exception for Lani due to her exceptional background.

Lani was a vital member of my NSF-funded research project, Investigating Virtual Learning Environments. In addition to gathering and analyzing background literature, Lani took the lead in coding students' open responses to survey questions about their study skills. Not satisfied to unthinkingly implement our own coding scheme, Lani raised very thoughtful questions about whether the codes we had developed were accurately capturing the behaviors we intended to measure. Lani suggested some alternative approaches for coding the data, which we agreed were better than our original approach and which we thus adapted.

Due to her valuable contributions in data analysis, review of prior literature, and writing, Lani is also a co-author on our paper in PLOS One Science Journal, and has thoughtfully participated as the only undergraduate in our project meetings, together with five UCI faculty, a postdoctoral researcher, and five PhD students from the fields of Computer Science, Biological Sciences, and Education. Though my main period of collaboration with Lani ended in 2018 with her graduation from UCI, it has been my privilege to stay in touch with her over the years. She is clearly applying the research skills she has developed as an undergraduate in all aspects of the instructional design process. I will look for any opportunities I can both to involve her as an instructional designer and to hire her to teach any of our courses on instructional design. Lani is clearly a true leader in this field.

Instructional Design Principles for Course Creation: Applied the ADDIE process by: creating an analysis canvas (documented the case for a course and created learning personas and learning objectives), engaging in discussions about working with SMEs, designing a course outline (selected a learning environment and approach, applied backward design and feedback loops, and created a design document), developing assessments, rubrics, and learning materials, populating an action plan for course implementation, and determining an evaluation plan to measure success of the course. Accepted from >700 applicants to Cohort 9. Through this cohort-based model, I engaged with IDs from around the world and practiced giving and receiving effective feedback that met the four pillars (constructive, specific, justified, kind).

Designing Social Learning Experiences: Collaborated with instructional design experts, instructors, and colleagues to design a learning strategy and implementation plan to convince key stakeholders to buy into a pilot program. Applied the four engines of collaborative learning to boost the collaborative element of virtual learning experiences and learned how to measure impact.

Scenario-Based Learning: Scaling for Impact: Topics covered include Scenario-Based Learning, Cognitive Research, Authenticity, Ill-Structured Problems, Analysis

Quick and Easy Learning Experiences: Topics covered include Learning Curation, Mayer's Principles, Design Psychology, Application of adult learning theories to course design/creation, eLearning development tools

Gamification: Myth vs. Reality: Topics covered include experiential elements of successful gamification in eLearning, when or why to choose gamification in eLearning, the role of agency in gamified learning experiences, risks and challenges of gamification