Jessica Adams: Instructional Design Specialist

As opposed to schooling, employment offers hands-on experience actually performing and applying educational theory whenever the possibility arises. Unfortunately, there is a lot more in employment to distract from progress – I’m going to say it: Michael Scott was largely right about HR (present company excluded, I’m sure). I’ve always given each position I’ve had my all and I’ve never once received a poor performance review because I put everything I can into anything I do. I care about my students, I care about my coworkers, and I care about the mission. Below, I’ve outlined my relevant work experience in the areas of Education and Instructional Design as well as filled in a bit about my very valuable time between positions.

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Master’s Degree and passing Georgia Assessments for the Certification of Educators (GACE) scores in hand, I entered the job market for a real career in 2011. Of course, in college, I’d had my various jobs as Target Sales Associate, restaurant server, or hostess at a martini bar and, save for maybe the position at Target, they all paid far more than a starting teacher salary. However, I was determined to start along the path to being a real educator and, unlike those other jobs, this one was something I could grow from.

Almost immediately, I got to work making the space more welcoming and the activity hub I knew it should be. I opened the doors to the art students to create murals and paint various sections in chalkboard paint. I created a computer lab and, as my principal remarked, they considered hiding tools from me in case I took a sledgehammer to the walls to create study spaces of the various empty rooms around the library.

I did not get into education to shush students or tell them to get in, get a book, and get out. I set out to create a safe, warm, and inviting central location for any type of intellectual curiosity. My educational background in Instructional Technology reflected in every corner of the room, and I was intensely proud of the environment I cultivated. In fact, when it came time to complete my project for my specialist degree, I partnered with a very tech-minded colleague from the English Department to create an entirely new classroom unit to teach the “Hero’s Journey” using the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft.

See More on this Project in my Portfolio

Apart from my assigned work as a librarian, instructional technologist, and media literacy advocate I also spearheaded two clubs: Reading Bowl and The Travel Club.

Reading Bowl was a club centered around an annual competition for readers in the State where participating students would be assigned a list of 20 YA lit titles each year which they’d be quizzed over in a March Madness style competition each Spring. I’d prepare each year by purchasing multiple copies of the books and holding weekly “book club” meetings where any student could read the book and discuss them after school. Those who wanted to compete were assigned to write sample trivia questions on the books as they read – I did the same – and we’d travel to the host schools to try our best. I’m so proud to say that my students made it to the State competition in my second year as coach of the team and never finished less than fourth place any other year.

The Travel Club was an idea I had around bringing cultural awareness to the students of this small mountain town in North Georgia. While the Spanish and French teachers had their biannual travel to Spain and France to focus on hearing natives speak, which is extremely valuable, I wanted to focus on literature and cultural development. In order to fund this venture, because travel is expensive, I started the first ever school store in Pickens High School called The Dragon’s Den. We sold soda through the school’s contract with Coca-Cola, we sold bespoke merchandise designed by the school’s art students, and we offered to become the central hub for all school fundraisers by keeping order forms handy to drive traffic. All proceeds went to a fund for the volunteering students who took shifts before school, after school, during their lunch hour (bringing their lunch tray to the library, of course) and we even invited the marketing classes to send work-study students to the store. All of this raised money to send over 60 students to London, Paris, and Rome during my tenure, many of whom would not have been able to afford the trip otherwise. Students who accompanied us on these trips went on to use the experience for college essays and to start their own travel journeys and I couldn’t be prouder of them.

Though it was very painful to do so, once I received my Ed.S. degree in Learning Design and Technology, my head turned to bigger things. I left Pickens High School in 2015 and, as my husband had aging parents who lived in Virginia, we made our move and my job-hunt for an Instructional Designer position began.

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Not long after arriving in Virginia, I had two job offers. I ultimately chose to work at the Virginia Institute of Procurement in Richmond. It was here that the next seven years of my career would be spent. First, as an Instructional Designer and second as Director.

As in my previous position, the Virginia Institute of Procurement (VIP) had a problem with modernity. All courses were classroom based and limited by lack of a dedicated classroom or lab. All certification exams were delivered by a proctor in a conference room and graded by a plastic laminate sheet with holes burned in to indicate the correct answers. The sheet was laid over the exam sheets of each individual student and marked with a highlighter, the incorrect answers added up and the score manually written on the paper. I was hired specifically to update these practices.

When I was hired, VIP was a department of three. A Director, an Instructional Designer, and an Administrative Assistant. We had two Certification Programs with one more, designed out of house, on the way. Still, Virginia was considered a leader in Procurement education and training, but there was so much potential for even more. And I grabbed at it!

My first major project was to transform the first Certification Program, the Virginia Contract Associate (VCA) from a weeklong classroom course to a much shorter hybrid version. To be honest, I made a case for the course to be entirely virtual – which I was eventually successful with once I was made Director – but that leap was just a bit too far for current leadership. So, I made sure that any Classroom activities could eventually be incorporated into the eLearning I added to the program so that the entire course could very easily be converted later down the line.

See More on this Project in my Portfolio

Utilizing Articulate Storyline, I also transformed that old paper and laminate exam system into a dynamic offline and, later, online exam which is still in use to this day. I designed an exam from the bottom up which includes several layers of security, scrambled questions/answers, and which automatically calculates and delivers scores to learners. No more grading by hand while the student watches – which led to very awkward interactions on all sides – and no more taking hours or even days to deliver official results. After creating this exam, I went on to use the same template for all other programs and exams in the department.

See More on this Project in my Portfolio

The other reason I was hired for this position was to act as the Technology Director for the annual Public Procurement Forum held at the Virginia Beach Convention Center. After my time as the Technology Director, and once I was hired as Director of VIP, I also transitioned to the Director of the entire conference. I speak at length in my portfolio on this event and project and warmly invite you to check it out!

As Technology Director, I spearheaded the purchase and population of the first ever conference app in use for the event. This increased our outreach and allowed us to promote the event even to those who could not attend live which was a boon to a state always looking to save money.

In May of 2017, my Director and supervisor retired. After a long a grueling process, complete with three interviews, I was offered the position of Director in September of 2017.

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I was actually on annual leave and on vacation when I received the call that I’d been chosen as the final candidate for the open position of the Director of the Virginia Institute of Procurement. The first order of business began immediately with a pulse-check on the annual public procurement conference, the direction of which had fallen to a now terminated employee who mismanaged the program. As of September 7, 2017, I was in charge of a program with a hard delivery date of November 13-15, 2017. The planning process for this event usually began in January of the year it was meant to be held, so, I had a lot to accomplish in a very short time.

I got right to work, making a few phone calls before I headed out to the beach for the day, setting up meetings, rallying the team, informing vendors of my new position and their new contact. When I returned from vacation, all gears were turning at top speed. I am very proud to say that Forum 2017 went off without a hitch, at least as far as the participants and stakeholders were concerned.

While I participated as the Technology Director for Forums 2015 and 2016, I was the director full-stop for Forum 2017, 2018, and 2019.

See my Portfolio for more on these conferences

I remember a small story about a pre-conference meeting with the convention center, which we held every year to update us on the convention center improvements and challenges, my team was asked if planning the annual conference was the extent of our job description. We laughed.

During my time as the Director for the Virginia Institute of Procurement, the following additional projects were completed, full descriptions available within my portfolio for no’s. 1-4.

1. The Virginia Contract Associate certification program fully migrated from a hybrid program to fully online and instructor led virtual classroom experience.
2. The Virginia Contract Officer program was revised from a two week classroom program to a hybrid asynchronous/synchronous virtual classroom experience.
3. The Virginia Contract Administration and Risk Management certification program was built and successfully launched.
4. The Virginia Institute of Procurement, under my sole direction, procured an LMS to house all procurement training both in and out of house. This is still in use to this day and contains some of my best designs:
   • View the LMS as it is today.
5. VIP grew from a three-person operation to a five-person department with a seat at the executive table with my successful lobbying of our program. We hired a classroom management specialist and an additional instructional designer to carry the increased load of an additional certification program.

By far, however, my proudest accomplishment as Director of VIP occurred during the Pandemic. With so much of our funding derived from our annual conference, and in-person conferences very difficult if not impossible to rationalize, I created the first ever all virtual public procurement conference and branded the conferences: Summit 2020 and Summit 2021.

See my Portfolio for more on these conferences

Unfortunately, in August of 2022, my father in law lost his long fight with illness and left us. My husband, since we had moved from Georgia, had been working with my father-in-law’s water purification business. This business supported my mother-in-law and was vital to her independence and financial security. With this familial need in mind, and not knowing how long my father-in-law would still be with us, I unfortunately submitted my resignation from the Virginia Institute of Procurement in June of 2022 on good terms and set about helping my husband retain the family business.

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From August 2022-Current, I’ve been managing all office aspects of the family business. My father-in-law left no instruction so it’s been a long and arduous process of shoring up customer relations, marketing, bookkeeping, and a little bit of web design.

Company Website (My Design)

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You could say that this is what started me back on my journey to Instructional Design. In February of 2024, my previous employers contacted me to see if they could hire me to update a few of my still in-use projects as they had no time in-house to do so. I gladly agreed. The major project I had was updating the virtual exam utilizing Articulate Storyline for the Virginia Contracting Officer exam. See the video below for a quick overview of what needed to be done. Essentially, updates to the program had rendered a few triggers and features obsolete in favor of much cleaner solutions. I applied these and delivered the finished product on time for the annual course delivery in August. I was offered a permanent position if I’d like to remain, but I decided it was best to simply move on and get to work on where I’d like to see my career progress. Which brings us to today!