Clicking, laughing, and “having fun” can look like engagement, but it can also be a mirage. In this episode, Jackie unpacks a stubborn instructional design myth that shows up in classrooms, eLearning, and workplace training: engagement means entertainment. If you’ve ever felt pressure to add games, humor, flashy visuals, music, competition, or constant interaction to keep attention, this conversation will help you slow down and design with more intention.

Jackie breaks down why the myth sticks around, especially when we’ve all sat through boring, passive, content-heavy learning. Entertainment is easy to see and easy to count: smiles, comments, clicks, completion rates, and attendance. But visible activity isn’t the same as learning. Real learner engagement goes deeper into attention, relevance, effort, reflection, practice, connection, feedback, and application. Sometimes engagement looks loud, but just as often it looks like concentration, problem solving, and learners wrestling with an idea long enough to make it useful.

You’ll leave with a practical shift toward purpose-based engagement: stop asking “How do I make this more fun?” and start asking “Why should learners care?” Finally, Jackie shares concrete strategies such as decision-making scenarios, low-stakes practice with feedback, reflection prompts, discussions to process ideas, and realistic challenges that support performance and transfer.

Subscribe, share this with a fellow educator or instructional designer, and leave a review if it helps. Then, grab the companion myth reset case file and try the weekly challenge.

🔗 Episode Links

Please check out the resource mentioned in the episode. Enjoy!

Myth Reset Case File: Engagement Beyond Entertainment

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A suffix can look like a tiny detail on paper, but it can carry an entire family story. Jackie sits down with Dr. Tamara Nall to talk about Junia, a formal naming tradition designed to give daughters the kind of visible legacy marker that “Junior” has long given sons. The conversation starts with naming, then opens into something bigger: identity, representation, and what changes in a culture when we finally give language to what has been missing.

Dr. Nall shares the personal roots behind the movement, including grief, fertility challenges, and the moment she realized there was no widely accepted, formal way for a mother to pass her full name to her daughter with the same status society grants fathers and sons. We unpack what a name can hold beyond identification: pride, courage, lineage, and a sense of purpose that grows when you understand the story you carry. We also dig into why Junia includes ceremony and documentation, such as declarations, naming certificates, and a global registry, and how those formal pieces can help families normalize maternal legacy without shame or fear of being judged.

From there, we connect the theme to education and instructional design, where belonging and representation shape how people learn. We talk about the “invisible backpack” every learner brings, why inclusive learning experiences are legacy work, and how curiosity about ancestry can deepen self-understanding even when family history is complicated. If you care about women’s history, cultural change, naming traditions, identity, or maternal legacy, this one stays with you. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway or your most meaningful family name story.

🔗 Website and Social Links:

Please visit Dr. Tamara Nall’s website and social media links below.

Dr. Tamara Nall’s Website

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📢 Call-to-Action: To learn more about Dr. Tamara Nall and the Junia movement, visit the Junia Legacy website, where you can explore the naming tradition, ceremony resources, certificates, and ways to support the movement.

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Support the show

💟 Designing with Love + allows you to support the show by keeping the mic on and the ideas flowing. Click on the link above to provide your support.

☕ Buy Me a Coffee is another way you can support the show, either as a one-time gift or through a monthly subscription.

🗣️ Want to be a guest on Designing with Love? Send Jackie Pelegrin a message on PodMatch, here: Be a guest on the show

🌐 Check out the show's website here: Designing with Love

📱 Send a text to the show by clicking the Send Jackie a Text link above.

👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!

A quiz can be quick, clean, and easy to score, but does it actually prove learning? We take on a stubborn myth in instructional design and education: that assessments must be tests to be valid. In this episode, Jackie explains why tests are so often treated as the gold standard, from the comfort of “objectivity” to the pressure for efficiency in schools, certification programs, and workplace training.

Then we make the real shift: valid assessment is about the quality of evidence, not the format. Using backward design, we start with the learning outcomes and ask what learners should be able to do and what would demonstrate it. If the goal is recall, a short quiz might be right. If the goal is application, analysis, decision making, communication, or performance, we may need case studies, branching scenarios, simulations, demonstrations, observations, checklists, portfolios, journals, or a clear rubric to capture authentic performance.

You’ll leave with a simple “myth reset” challenge: review one assessment you use and ask whether it collects the evidence you truly need or whether it’s there because it’s familiar. If you found this helpful, subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review so more educators and learning designers can build assessments that measure what matters.

🔗 Episode Links

Please check out the resource mentioned in the episode. Enjoy!

Myth Reset Case File: Assessment Beyond Tests

Send Jackie a Text

Support the show

💟 Designing with Love + allows you to support the show by keeping the mic on and the ideas flowing. Click on the link above to provide your support.

☕ Buy Me a Coffee is another way you can support the show, either as a one-time gift or through a monthly subscription.

🗣️ Want to be a guest on Designing with Love? Send Jackie Pelegrin a message on PodMatch, here: Be a guest on the show

🌐 Check out the show's website here: Designing with Love

📱 Send a text to the show by clicking the Send Jackie a Text link above.

👍🏼 Please make sure to like and share this episode with others. Here's to great learning!