The Face Behind Our Learning Offerings
Did you know that if you click on the purple navigation button that says: Learning Portal… you will be taken to our CHURCHx platform. If you’ve never visited it before, why not try it now?! (but don’t forget to come back to read the rest of this post).
Most of what we offer through CHURCHx’s learning portal bears the fingerprints of someone you've probably never met. Today, I want to change that.
Meet Natalie Oldfield. Natalie is our Instructional Designer, and she is the quiet architect behind nearly every e-learning experience we publish. When you take Leading Worship, or Lay Preaching, or Self-Leadership, or The History of Indigenous-Settler Relations in Canada and it feels intuitive rather than overwhelming… that's Natalie's craft at work.
Let me tell you a little about her. Natalie is an eLearning Manager and Learning Specialist with over 15 years of experience in the field. She specializes in applying advanced learning theories, instructional design techniques, and instructional technologies in the collaborative design, development, and redesign of high-quality courses. She has designed for numerous universities across Canada and the United States, including Western University, University of Toronto, McGill University, Ohio University, and Hofstra Law School.
She holds an M.A. in Educational Technology from the University of British Columbia and an M.A. in Conflict Resolution from Abilene Christian University. She also holds certificates in eLearning from the University of Toronto.
But a bio can only tell you so much. What it misses is the way Natalie works with people. Our subject matter experts come to her as deeply knowledgeable, deeply passionate practitioners… and almost none of them have ever built an online course before. Natalie has a real gift for honouring what they bring while gently guiding them into a medium they didn't grow up in. She makes the unfamiliar feel possible.
And another fascinating feature of Natalie is that she is, what I call, a “digital nomad”. When we get together virtually, I’ll often begin our conversations by asking “Where in the world are you today, Natalie?”
I met Natalie when I was being onboarded at Knox College and taking Western’s Professional Certificate in Learning and Development. Natalie was one of my instructors! So, as I started working on our learning platform, I thought it would be helpful to get her advice on things. And I am so delighted that I asked. Since Natalie is the founder and CEO of eDesignWorks Ltd., an eLearning firm serving international clients, where she leads a team of instructional designers, content developers, and multimedia specialists.
If your ministry, like ours, or organization has been thinking about building (or rebuilding) a course, training program, or learning platform… you might want to reach out to Natalie’s team… tell them that John from Ministry Forum sent you!
Their work includes:
Full course and training builds — from consultation with your subject matter expert through to a complete build inside your LMS
Course and training audits — a detailed review of an existing offering with feedback and recommendations
Course and training updates — refreshing existing programs with active learning, scenario-based learning, and other engaging strategies
LMS customization — custom look-and-feel, intuitive navigation, consistent user experience
Custom multimedia and graphics — videos, flow charts, timelines, infographics
Video editing — intros, outros, music, branding, closed captioning, and transcripts
If any of that sounds like something your context could use, Natalie genuinely welcomes the conversation. You can reach her directly at natalie@edesignworks.com.
As you know, the tagline of Ministry Forum is You Are Not Alone… and that's true of how we build, too. The work that reaches you is the product of a small, dedicated team, and Natalie is one of the people who makes it shine!
What's coming next
Natalie is currently hard at work on two new e-learning offerings we're developing as part of our You Are Not Alone Project specifically the Prayer and Bible Study Accompaniment stream of our Lilly Endowment-funded Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative.
The first is an e-course built around Taylor Scott-Reimer's book She Believed: Recovering the Fierce Faith of the Women of Scripture — and Ourselves— an invitation into the stories of women of faith whose voices have shaped, and continue to shape, our understanding of Scripture.
The second is an e-learning experience with The Rev. Dr. Amanda Miller, based on her new book Voices of Resistance: The Bible's Songs of Victory, Peace, and Protest (Abingdon Press) — exploring how Scripture sounds different when we listen for the voices that push back.
Both will launch on CHURCHx, and both exist because Natalie knows how to take a brilliant author's manuscript and turn it into a learning experience that actually teaches.