My primary project during the externship was helping redesign and develop Idaho’s CTE Administrator training into an asynchronous professional development course in Canvas. The goal was to take the existing CTE Administrator training and turn it into a course that was more organized, accessible, engaging, and practical for new and current CTE administrators. The course was designed to help administrators understand the Idaho CTE system, including program quality, funding, reporting, educator support, student leadership, and working with industry and community partners. An important part of the project was also making the course scalable and useful for administrators who may have very little time between starting their position and beginning work with their staff.

During my time at the Host Site, I helped build and revise multiple parts of the course. I developed portions of the course structure, built content and assessments, contributed to the CTSO and data/reporting modules, created and reviewed course pages, and helped develop the course syllabus and survey. I also created and used a course check-off document to identify missing content, inconsistencies, assessment alignment issues, and areas that needed revision. Another major part of my work was coordinating and editing interviews with CTE leaders and industry professionals from different program areas. These interviews were intended to bring real people and real career experiences into the course rather than relying entirely on written content. I also worked on video editing, captions, file organization, accessibility, and creating both shorter and longer versions of interview videos.
The project also gave me the opportunity to think much more deeply about how people actually learn online. We intentionally worked toward a consistent structure across the modules using the 5E framework, while also considering accessibility, purposeful assignments, clear navigation, meaningful assessments, and visual elements that guide learners through the course. We discussed instructional design models such as ADDIE, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Backwards Design, and Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction and considered how each approach could or could not work in an online CTE environment.
This experience expanded my career knowledge in ways that I did not necessarily expect when I started the externship. I gained a much better understanding of how CTE operates at the state level, particularly the connections between funding, compliance, program standards, educator services, reporting, and industry partnerships. I also learned more about the role of a CTE administrator and how different that role can be from traditional educational leadership. Many CTE teachers come from industry backgrounds and bring different experiences, skills, and ideas about leadership, which means professional learning and communication need to be designed with those differences in mind.
The externship also changed the way I think about my own teaching. Working so closely with other people to create one final product made me think more carefully about how I present information, how I organize online materials, and whether an assignment is actually helping students learn or is simply asking them to complete something. I am going to carry that perspective back into my own classroom, especially when creating online course materials and digital assignments. I want to be more intentional about making digital learning clear, purposeful, accessible, and connected to what students actually need to know and do. Our discussions about technology also reinforced for me that technology should have a purpose rather than being included simply because it is available.

Finally, this experience helped me see additional possibilities for my future career. I really enjoyed the combination of instructional design, technology, collaboration, and creating something that can be used by a larger audience. Seeing how a team can take existing content and turn it into a polished online learning experience made me consider future opportunities where I could continue using those skills beyond my own classroom. The biggest thing I am taking away from the externship is that good teaching and good instructional design are not just about having strong content; they are about understanding your audience, working with others, and intentionally designing an experience that helps people use what they have learned.