headshot of light-skinned man with dark, buzzed hair and close-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard wearing dark-green open-collared shirt standing in front of brick wall Chris Friend Listening & Learning Teacher, speaker, and podcaster specializing in introducing newcomers to conversations around education, writing, and technology. Learn More
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Coordinated design of training programs, tailored to your audiences.

From curriculum planning to digital delivery, I’ll connect your brand, your content, and your learners

Curriculum Development

From program-level planning through course alignment and integration, I create cohesive educational experiences that are practical, targeted, and consistent. For example, I designed and branded a three-course writing sequence integrating two disparate sets of national standards (NCTE & CWPA), two sets of institutional standards, and fluid departmental expectations.

Professional Training

In business environments, I bring focus and consistency to the design and implementation of training programs, emphasizing practicality and understanding. For instance, I designed a three-course business-writing sequence tailored to government employees by adapting to organizational precedent, incorporating disciplinary best practices, and enhancing document cohesion.

Hybrid Learning Design

I apply best practices in digital education while maintaining a focus on human connection. My decades of physical and virtual classroom experience, plus my work facilitating conversation on Hybrid Pedagogy, make me a deliberative, conscientious educator concerned more with people than with content. I discuss this further in my book, Hybrid Teaching, available through booksellers or on Hybrid Pedagogy.

Digital Publishing

Beyond designing classroom training materials using productivity software, I used XeTeX to typeset Hybrid Teaching for print and ebook delivery, manage a WordPress multisite for class blogs and MOOCs, maintain the digital scholarly journal Hybrid Pedagogy on Ghost, and host Teacher of the Ear podcast on Anchor.fm.

My Occasional Blog Updates

An adorable, wrinkly dog rests atop an adorable, pink plush unicorn, being adorable. But can we tell (and respond with empathy to) what the dog feels?
16 Mar 2023

Empathy in Post-Pandemic Education

Teachers should emphasize empathy and hone our attention to be more in-tune with the students in our classes, regardless of modality.
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This broken egg reminds us that failure is often necessary, even in writing. How can we teach students to embrace failure and revision when they've been taught that one draft is sufficient?
21 Feb 2023

Revision: Writing Through Failure

Writing affords us the ability to revise our ideas before delivering them. Here’s why writing classes should teach through failure.
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A small statue of a shushing finger in front of a face rests on a shelf. In the background, stacks of books. What information do we lose by removing sound from our texts?
20 Feb 2023

In Defense of Sound

The sound of student writing tells us more than the content alone. Reading text aloud brings life to the words.
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