Professional Background
My name is Jennifer Maddrell. I’m a instruction design consultant and college instructor. I work to create high-quality learning experiences and performance improvement solutions to help people and organizations realize their goals. The focus of my work is providing solutions necessary for effecting positive change.
With extensive experience in online learning, I provide contracted educational services, including instructional design, professional development coaching, and evaluation. My current professional projects include contracts with World Education and the ScaleLIT (formerly, Chicago Citiwide Literacy Coalition) to provide subject matter expertise and support for adult educators on how to effectively incorporate learning technology into their classrooms. Past projects included work with Savant Learning Systems to design online learning, as well as with the National Institute of Aerospace Associates to perform a two-year instructional evaluation of the Real-World / In-World NASA Engineering Design Challenge. For over a decade, I was on the editorial team of the Journal of Computing in Higher Education, a peer-reviewed academic journal contributing to our understanding of instructional technologies and educational environments.
I’m also appointed as an Instructor of Education at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development where I’ve taught instructional design courses since 2018 within the Instructional Technology program. Previously, I was adjunct faculty in the Instructional Design and Technology program in the College of Education at Old Dominion University (ODU) where I completed my Ph.D. While living in New York, I had an appointment with Baruch College to design and facilitate courses within the school’s Corporate Training and Instructional Design program in the Division of Continuing and Professional Studies, which included the design and implementation of a customized training workshop with the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
In addition to my work as an educator and instructional design consultant, I founded Designers for Learning, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, with the aim of providing service-learning opportunities for instructional designers to help the social impact sector. From 2014 to 2019, Designers for Learning engaged over 4,000 people in professional development courses and real-world service projects. Over this time, participants created, implemented, and evaluated learning and performance improvement efforts customized to the needs of mission-driven organizations. These projects included the design of learning experiences, the development of educational resources, and the use of instructional technologies to help nonprofits reach their goals. Volunteers with Designers for Learning gained instructional design experience while creating solutions crucial to the success of the social impact sector. In other words, our participants gained experience for good!
Before enrolling in the ODU doctoral program, I worked for over 15 years in various underwriting and management positions in the insurance industry after completing a Bachelor of Business Administration degree at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a Master of Business Administration degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2005, I began a career transition to pursue my passion for education and technology. After taking a series of instructional design courses at New York University, I was accepted into the Master of Science in Education program at Indiana University where I completed my degree in 2007. While a doctoral student at Old Dominion University, I was a Graduate Research Assistant and received the 2010 Mandell Award as an outstanding student in Instructional Design and Technology. I received a 2010 – 2011 dissertation fellowship to complete my doctoral dissertation that examined the relationship between distance learners’ perceptions of community and learning outcomes.
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