michael west

instructional designer // corporate trainer // educator

Select from the menu above to view samples of my work.

About Me

Education

  • Master of Education in higher education administration from the University of South Carolina.

  • Bachelor of Arts in English with a communications concentration from Armstrong State College (now Georgia Southern University).

Professional Associations & Awards

  • Former VP for Finance for the Western Ohio Chapter of the Association for Talent Development (ATD)

  • Member, Midlands South Carolina Chapter of ATD (ATD-Midlands)

  • National Association for Campus Activities (NACA) Southeast Region Outstanding Professional of the Year

  • Three-time finalist for Colonial Life's Aspire award, recognizing customer service excellence among home office employees

  • Colonial Life Outstanding Field Training and Development employee, Q3 2024

A Little Bit More...

Educational professional with more than 25 years experience in corporate training, instructional design, curriculum development, classroom and virtual delivery, e-Learning, new-hire onboarding, sales training, and learning management systems. I possess a unique blend of instructional design skills and training skills in that I am as effective teaching an audience of 200 people as I am alone in front of a computer developing e-learning modules or creating workbooks.

Knowing how to interact with stakeholders is a key part of the instructional design process. I would suggest that it is even more important than technical skills. I am able to consult with and counsel stakeholders at every level of an organization, helping them identify learning gaps, articulate desired learnig outcomes, and outline learning strategies to close those gaps.

Personal

Born and raised in Savannah, Georgia and along its coasts and rivers, I'm an avid fan of all Georgia sports teams, including the Georgia Bulldogs and the Atlanta Braves (long before either was fashionable), as well as the Atlanta Falcons (which has never been fashionable).

In my free time, I enjoy movies, reading, photography, cartooning, and writing short stories.

Currently, I live in Columbia, South Carolina (USA) with my wife, our four children, and our rescue mutt, Stella.

Self-paced Learning Samples

Feedback from sales managers suggested that many new agents did not fully understand the role of social media in building and growing their businesses. In response, I partnered with sales leaders and subject matter experts to create Social Media 101, a module now included in the new agent onboarding pathway. This excerpt is an interaction from that module.

Tools used: Articulate Storyline, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, JavaScript, WellSaid AI Voiceover Studio.

This brief video introduces the key elements of the LinkedIn profile page. It was part of a curriculum I created that improved managers’ recruiting efforts by helping them build stronger, more competitive LinkedIn profiles.

Tools used: Vyond, Camtasia, Adobe Audition, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop.

An international in-home care provider introduced a private duty nursing program, which permitted licensed caregivers to perform limited, specific tasks that might be medically related. As the Learning and Development Manager, I consulted with our corporate nursing staff and multiple business coaches to create a self-paced curriculum of 5 modules. This is a sample of one of those courses.

Tools used: Articulate Rise, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop.

Sample Training Reference Materials

Below are samples of workbooks and quick reference guides that I've created. Some proprietary material has been replaced with filler content or placeholder text.

Tools used: Tools varied from project to project, but in most instances I used a combination of Adobe Acrobat, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft PowerPoint.

A state-wide law firm that I worked for migrated their workforce of about 100 to new PCs and the new Microsoft Office suite of products. As the training manager, I was responsible for training our employees on the new product. This is the advanced skills for Excel workbook that I created and was distributed to all end-users.

A pivotal revelation for businesses during the early 2020s pandemic was that remote work and training are not only possible, but are viable, practical alternatives to traditional practices. This is a handbook/guide provided to facilitators of a virtual training class that introduced benefits enrollers to the concept of strategic sales skills.

The home health care organization that I worked with rolled out a new program for its nationwide network of franchise owners. I created this workbook, which was provided to franchisees during the national rollout of the new care program.

This a sample of a one-page quick reference sheet I created.

PowerPoint

Select an image or heading to download one of the files below.

This is a sample pulled from a larger deck that I designed for a Senior VP of Sales. Proprietary information has been removed and replaced with generic info.

During a recent refresh of our company's new sales manager training, a focus group of veteran managers suggested a more impactful way of conveying the different tasks required for continued growth. This was also included as part of my DevLearn 2025 presentation. (See below.)

As part of a virtual learning that introduced benefits enrollers to the concept of strategic selling, we wanted something a little more interactive to allow learners to practice positioning solutions to potential enrollees. In addition to being used in a virtual learning, this interaction was used in person on a Smart Board.

I delivered the session Enhancing Data & Process Visualization in PowerPoint at DevLearn 2025, where I shared strategies for applying Cognitive Load Theory to the design and presentation of different data and processes. The discussion highlighted how pairing the morph transition with carefully chosen, subtle, yet impactful, animations can enhance clarity and boost learner retention.

The theme of a recent annual sales meeting centered on acceleration, highlighted by a logo featuring a digital tachometer. For his presentation, one of our vice presidents wanted to somehow tie in the energy of the Fast and Furious movie franchise, requesting a creative reveal of the company’s year‑end sales numbers. I designed a slide where the figures appeared through an odometer‑style animation.

In-person Training and Instruction

Adjunct faculty

  • Belmont Abbey College (NC, USA)

  • Georgia Southern University (USA)

  • Radford University (VA, USC)

Classroom training

  • LexisNexis

  • New sales hire training/onboarding

  • Nationwide rollout training of new CRM system

  • Facilitated sessions at annual sales meetings

  • Turner Padget Graham & Laney P.A.

  • New hire training/onboarding

  • Facilitated MS Office 2010 training as part of statewide PC refresh

  • CK Franchising, Inc.

  • Bi-monthly new franchisee training

  • Quarterly nationwide workshops

  • Led sessions at annual leadership conference

Conference workshops & presentations

The Art & Science of e-LearningAnnual ATD Midlands Workshop - Columbia, SC (USA)2017, 2018, 2019
Enhancing Data & Process Visualization in PowerPointDevLearn - Las Vegas, NV (USA)2025
The Art & Science of Instructional DesignATD South Carolina February webinar2026

Skills

Skills Section Test
Partially ProficientProficientHighly Proficient
Core Capabilities
Needs analysis
Stakeholder alignment
Curriculum design
Project management
Training evaluation
Coaching & mentoring
Technical Skills
Adobe Creative Cloud
Audition
Illustrator
InDesign
Photoshop
Premiere
Audio & Video Production
Audacity
Camtasia
ClipChamp
Vyond
WellSaid Labs
e Learning Authoring Tools
Adobe Captivate
Articulate Rise
Articulate Storyline
Lectora
Microsoft Office
Excel
PowerPoint
Word

Case Studies

Initiatives I led that required critical analysis, problem‑solving, and creative learning solutions.

LexisNexis
New Hire Training Revamp

CK Franchising, Inc.
LMS Release

Colonial Life
Public Sector Curriculum

LexisNexis New Sales Hire Training Revamp

Overview

LexisNexis’ onboarding program for new sales consultants originally included five weeks of distance learning followed by eight days of in‑person training.

The distance learning program included self‑paced modules, weekly checkpoint calls with home office educational consultants, and shadowing veteran sales agents in the field. The 8-day classroom program introduced the new hires to product owners, competitive analysis experts, and legal‑research support staff. The classroom portion also featured intensive role playing and mock sales calls.

Despite its breadth of content, results of the program were disappointing. In their first 3 months following the onboarding program, new sales consultants' point of sales sat at a disappointing 26% of quota.

Low retention complicated this matter further. On average, new sales consultants were leaving the company 16 months after their onboarding. In exit interviews most consultants indicated that the lack of early success was a major catalyst that prompted their departure.

Analysis

Through interviews with sales leaders and recent program graduates, two issues became clear: new hires were overwhelmed by the volume of information in the onboarding program, and they had little opportunity to apply skills in the field. Leadership’s expectation that new consultants “know everything immediately” proved unrealistic.

In follow-up discussions, I started asking a more targeted question: “What do new sales consultants need to know to in order to be successful early on?” We identified milestones for months four through six and month twelve. These milestones would allow us to move away from the original “drinking from the firehose” approach to a more deliberate, goal‑oriented structure that emphasized early successes and skill development.

Solution

The result was a more practical, adult learning‑based onboarding program.

  • The distance learning program was converted to a fully self‑paced experience. Recordings of previous live webinars were repurposed into MP4 recordings. PowerPoints were rebuilt as e‑learning modules, and all materials were distributed through multimedia formats. The only synchronous components were a weekly check-in call with an education program developer and face-to-face coaching in the field.
  • Using the newly established milestones as our timeline, the classroom training was split into two five‑day sessions.

    The first session took place immediately following the distance learning program and focused on skills essential to a new sales hire’s first 90 days.

    Following this first session, new hires spent 3 months in the field, where they shadowed teammates, received regular coaching, and applied what they had learned.

    The second five‑day classroom session, hosted in month four, focused on 4–6 month milestones.

  • The first year concluded with monthly follow‑up webinars from month eight through month twelve, focusing on advanced sales skills and more robust product knowledge.
Impact

This new training structure resulted in the following:

  • Reduced training costs by more than $15,000 by implementing self‑paced learning, eliminating printed materials, and cutting labor hours committed to live webinars.
  • Within three years, the average point of sales for new hires’ first 3 months improved from 26% of quota to 43%.
  • Increased new‑hire average tenure from 16 months to 25 months.
  • Strengthened alignment with sales leadership as results validated the new approach.
  • Established a scalable onboarding model that improved confidence, retention, and long‑term performance.

CK Franchising, Inc. LMS Transition

Overview

CK Franchising, Inc. (CKFI) provided a learning management system (LMS) for its international network of more than 600 in-home senior care franchises. However, only 70% of the franchises actively used the LMS. And with good reason.

Numerous bugs and glitches plagued the system. Course-assignment capabilities were limited. Reporting and notification features, when they worked, were minimal. Learning modules would often fail to launch. All of this was complicated by a cumbersome and unintuitive user interface.

In my second year at CKFI we switched providers. As we approached the launch of the new LMS, the primary challenge was no longer the technical limitations of the old system; the new platform solved those. The actual challenge was restoring franchise owners’ confidence in any LMS provider.

Analysis

As the LMS administrator for CKFI, I spent countless hours helping individual franchise owners and their staff navigate the challenges presented by the old system. I also knew what opportunities that the new system presented.

The group of holdouts included a couple dozen franchise owners who wielded considerable influence within the network. Their displeasure with the old LMS shaped the general sentiment of the network, and their buy‑in was essential for a successful transition.

Solution

Prior to rollout, we introduced the new LMS through a series of webinars that highlighted key features and demonstrated how the new system addressed the network’s pain points. This pre‑launch engagement alone increased adoption from just over 70% to 74% within the first month of implementation.

In addition to the pre-launch webinars – and perhaps more critically – I scheduled one-on-one sessions with the more influential holdouts. Because I had previously met with each of them to understand their frustrations with the old system, I was able to tailor my demos to their specific concerns.

Finally, I partnered with the LMS provider to create a sandbox environment and set up test accounts for these owners. This gave them the freedom to explore the new system independently, allowing them to form their own impressions

Impact

Within a year of implementation, owner participation increased from 74% to 83%. By the end of the second calendar year, 87% of our owners were actively using the new LMS.

One particular owner makes this experience especially memorable for me. She loathed the old system. She called me weekly complaining about its ineffectiveness, its limitations, and its general clunkiness. I spent hours each month trying to help, but ultimately we reached a point where all that I could do was apologize on behalf of the LMS provider.

She was one of the owners with whom I spent some extra one-on-one time during pre-launch. Seven months after the rollout, at our annual leadership conference, this owner approached me and said, "Michael, I want to talk to you about this new LMS." I expected her to start listing all of the issues with the new system. Instead, she told me, "Michael, I cannot tell you how happy I am with this new LMS. It is absolutely everything we needed, and I just wanted to say 'thanks.' ”

Colonial Life Public Sector Curriculum

Overview

In my third year at Colonial Life, sales leadership set a goal to expand our presence in the public sector by increasing both client acquisition and overall sales performance. The public sector organization approached the learning solutions team (LST) with a 120‑slide PowerPoint they had been using for training around the country. They asked us to upload it to the LMS so regional and territory trainers could begin delivering the program nationwide.

Analysis

This request exposed a deeper issue. The public sector group operated in a silo and had never collaborated with LST, despite leadership’s directive that all training initiatives involve our team. They had been creating their own content and delivering their own training for quite some time. No one in their organization had any background in adult learning theory or instructional design. It became clear that the public sector team viewed this handoff of the content and adding it to our content library as a formality.

The material they provided was a dense mix of tactics, concepts, and statistics, all of which was, at best, tangentially connected. It relied heavily on lecture and assumed a level of subject‑matter expertise that most field trainers simply didn’t have.

Early meetings were challenging. Trust was low, and the public sector team had a limited understanding of instructional design or adult learning principles. From their perspective, the training was effective because their long-time market consultant consistently received positive level 1 evaluations. (The training was not evaluated beyond that first level.) What they had not recognized was that his success came from his experience in the field and many years of working within the public sector industry, not from the content itself.

I faced two challenges. First of all, I needed to build trust with a skeptical, reluctant partner group. Secondly, I had to somehow capture the knowledge and expertise of the public sector market consultant and translate it into a cohesive training program based in sound instructional design principles.

Solution

My first step was to help the team understand the value of instructional design. I showed them samples of my team’s work, including e-learning modules, storyboards, and worksheets. These conversations allowed me to explore with them the importance of creating learning objectives and how a properly sequenced, blended training program lays the foundation for success in the future. Most importantly, I demonstrated how structured learning differs from SME-driven information dumps.

To bring the public sector consultant’s expertise to the surface, we scheduled and recorded a full mock training session led by him. That recording became the foundation for a comprehensive training program. This included a facilitator guide that would allow the regional trainers to teach the content more easily.

We then prepared the field through train‑the‑trainer sessions and launched a pilot across seven territories with 10–15 agents from each territory. These were followed by focus groups to help refine the program further.

Impact

Three months after the rollout, we compared public sector sales performance between fifty agents who had completed the training and a randomly selected group who had not. The trained group outperformed the control group by an average of 37% in public sector sales. These results validated our work and provided compelling evidence to promote the program nationwide.

Additionally, the project not only strengthened the relationship between the learning solutions team and the public sector group, but also established a repeatable model for capturing SME expertise and converting it into effective field training.