Materials Design
I’ve been involved in designing and developing educational materials for over twenty five years, beginning with ESL textbooks for young learners and progressing to digital and higher education resources.
Print Era - Textbook Authoring and Editing
Early in my career, I authored ESL textbooks. These included Shane Primary English (Book 4), aimed at learners aged 7-9, and materials for China's People's Education Press, alongside a junior high English textbook for Addison-Wesley Longman. I conducted teacher-training workshops for teachers using the books. Working on these projects involved successfully meeting tight publishing deadlines, communicating clearly with editors, illustrators and co-authors, and clarifying and delivering on textbook requirements.
Early Digital Materials
After my early print work, I moved into digital materials development. At Guided e-Learning, I created "webquest" style materials, learning to effectively leverage existing web content by developing engaging learning tasks around it. Around the same time, I developed online teaching materials for Wall Street English’s early video- conference teaching platform, "Channel." I authored structured lesson plans and resources specifically designed to support teachers delivering interactive online lessons.
Digital and Online Materials for EAP
In my EAP teaching role, I developed a wide range of digital materials. I created interactive timed exams and organized comprehensive question banks within Moodle, training colleagues to use these tools effectively. I designed formative assessment tasks integrating multiple skills—for example, activities combining listening with speaking (students listened to lectures or podcasts, then gave presentations) and reading with writing (students used provided texts to write research essays). I frequently incorporated multimedia, generating original audio scripts (sometimes using AI tools) and producing audio via TTS software (ElevenLabs). I've used tools like H5P and Articulate to produce interactive materials, and my skillset also includes basic audio editing in Audacity and video editing with OpenShot.
Below is an example of an interactive package I developed to teach students about written academic genre. Click on the videos to play/pause.