Joyce was an Instructional Product Design for Education Intern at BYU during Winter 2025.
Briefly explain what you did and the result of your internship.
We created a (K-12) Lent curriculum for US teachers to promote a non-profit international organization, Mary's Meals, to feed 3 million hungry children worldwide in school. We talked with the stakeholders, broke into smaller groups, and systematically incorporated Design Thinking principles into our meaningful creative projects. We helped to create ready-to-use multimedia lesson plans and presentations on Canva for teachers at all grade levels to use for this six-week course. In addition, we also worked with stakeholders to create some resources to train missionaries at BYU Pathway Connect. We interviewed missionaries and students from Nigeria and PathwayConnect administrators to better understand needs and implement instructional designs to produce needed materials within two months. We implemented the principles from Creative Confidence that we read and presented on as pairs. I was impressed to see how our instructor, Dr. Stephanie Allen, aptly modeled and helped us understand what an instructional designer does. We also have instructional design guest speakers to share their work experiences on top of our hands-on, meaningful projects. With the limited time frame, we were able to produce meaningful, useful instructional resources for our clients, and not in one year, but within two months, for not one organization but two client groups. With my three decades of teaching, this has been a fantastic capstone course that helps students learn essential principles and implement and evaluate their work. It involves all the 21st-century skills, and integrates the BYU Education aims and goals to be spiritually strengthening, intellectually enlarging, character building, and leading to lifelong learning and service. What an empowering, uplifting, and valuable internship course to take--I feel confident with the knowledge and skills gleaned to forth to serve.
What did you learn on your internship that you were not expecting to learn?
I wasn't expecting to learn so many hands-on skills and knowledge to become a capable instructional designer
How have your future plans changed because of what you learned from your internship experience?
They haven't changed. I am grateful that the Spirit prompted me to take Dr. Allen's classes to learn what I needed to know to help BYU Pathway English language learners gain academic English skills. Father in heaven has always guided me professionally and blessed me with master teachers—Dr. Allen is one of them, and I am glad our paths met.
Please share how your experience led to personal inspiration or insightful revelation.
It gave me the confidence that nothing is impossible, as they were big projects with time constraints and can be stressful, but Dr. Allen is able to skillfully pace our outcomes with bite-sized, achievable mini milestones so we can complete them in time, professionally, and of high quality. All the stakeholders were very pleased with what we have produced. Our IP&T courses were relevant as we incorporated our multimedia, computer skills like webpage designs, video editing, publishing, infographics, teaching pedagogies, and instructional design theories to come up with capstone projects. We were given choices to choose which group to be in and how to utilize our various talents to work for the better good. It was inspiring to see how, as church members, we can come together, work hard, and pull our weight to move things forward.
Would you recommend this internship to other students?
I would highly recommend Dr. Allen's classes (I have taken two from her). They are not only informative and practical but also inspiring and hands-on, helping us become skilled, confident instructional designers.
Is there anything else you would like to say regarding your internship?
I'm thankful for this inspiring internship program to help us learn valuable hands-on experiences relating to our majors. They not only look good on our resumes, but truly help us be the desirable instructional designers the world needs