M365 Basics Training Program
This work was created in my professional capacity and is owned by my employer. Due to its proprietary nature, the artifact itself is not available for public viewing. The case study below tells the full story of the work.
THE BRIEF
A non-technical government client team was moving to Microsoft 365 with zero baseline familiarity with the platform, and the existing training was a rough, informal outline rather than a usable program. The objective was to turn that outline into foundational training covering platform structure, access management, core apps, and automation tools, delivered in two formats: a self-paced asynchronous guide and a live, facilitator-led session, and built to work within a fully virtual delivery environment under strict constraints: no personal phones, government-approved machines only, and Microsoft Teams as the delivery platform.
THE PROCESS
I owned the project end-to-end, from instructional design and content architecture through the subject-matter accuracy review process, tool selection, visual design direction, and the live-session build itself. I converted the raw outline into curriculum-level content organized into lessons with defined learning objectives rather than topic summaries, and designed original teaching metaphors to make abstract access control concepts concrete for a non-technical audience: a three-circle model for individual, collaboration, and institutional storage, and a gate, door, safe model for authentication, authorization, and permissions. From one shared content base, I built two parallel formats: a formal, standalone self-paced guide with numbered knowledge checks and an answer key appendix, and a facilitator guide with talking points and discussion prompts for live delivery, restructuring the document architecture iteratively as scope evolved until separate modules consolidated into one guide with consistent lesson-level formatting. I ran a structured technical review with a subject-matter expert across two full passes, correcting substantive accuracy issues while deliberately holding the line against adding complexity a zero-context audience didn't need, evaluated and selected kAHOOT! as the live-training platform after ruling out phone-dependent and browser-only tools that didn't fit the operational constraints, and directed AI image generation in Adobe Firefly for fourteen custom illustrated graphics, one per knowledge-check question, iterating through multiple rounds to fix accuracy issues and unwanted AI artifacts and lock in a consistent visual style.
THE OUTCOME
The program shipped as a complete, ready-to-deliver package: a combined, multi-lesson, self-paced guide with knowledge checks and an answer key; a facilitator guide for live delivery; a fully built interactive live session with 14 custom graphics and a post-session feedback instrument; and a structured revision log documenting the subject-matter expert review. I also built the evaluation layer directly into the program itself, pairing post-session feedback questions with a plan to use live-session analytics, completion rates, percent correct, and answer distribution to identify content gaps and guide future revisions once the first live session runs.
SKILLS DEMONSTRATED
Instructional design and curriculum development through converting a raw outline into lesson-level content with defined objectives, paired with technical writing calibrated for a completely non-technical audience; adult learning theory through original teaching metaphors that made abstract concepts concrete and a deliberate discipline against adding unnecessary complexity; UX thinking through multi-format content design built from one shared base and tool evaluation grounded in real operational constraints rather than convenience; and stakeholder collaboration through a structured, multi-pass subject-matter expert review process, AI-assisted content production directed through iterative revision, and a training evaluation design built to inform future improvement.
