I build courses the same way some people plan trips.

Not in a straight line. Not from chapter one to chapter fourteen.

But as a map.

When I begin a new class project, I don’t open the LMS first. I open a blank canvas. At the center sits one word: Project. Around it, ideas start to gather. Development. Course. Process. Learning. Evaluation. Implementation. Reporting. Quality Matters. Industry expectations. Student experience.

It looks messy at first. It always does.

But tourism exists in space and time, and so does learning. There is a before, a during, and an after. There is planning, execution, closure. There are stakeholders—students, industry partners, accrediting bodies—each with their own language and expectations.

Pudliner (2007) reminds us that modern narratives, especially digital ones, shape how we understand experience. In many ways, this mind map is my teaching weblog. It captures the movement of thought before it becomes a project or course.

A course is not a stack of assignments. It is a journey with a beginning, middle, and end. It is a constructed experience in time. The LMS is simply the delivery mechanism. The real work happens here, in the mapping of relationships.

Where does evaluation live? How do assignments connect to outcomes? Where do discussions and reflection sit? How does industry practice inform theory?

The map answers those questions visually before the project or course or even the students ever log in.

Tourism teaches us that experience must be intentional. Course design is no different.

Before I write the first module, I draw the journey.

Right now, my attention is split across a few threads.

There’s a writing project that is still finding its internal architecture. The characters are clearer than the plot. The mood is stronger than the structure. Some days I’m deep in the story; other days I’m stepping back, trying to figure out what the story is actually asking for. I’m learning not to force resolution too early. A draft needs room to be wrong before it can become honest.

There’s also teaching work that feels less like “prep” and more like design. I’m thinking about how students encounter complexity — not just content, but the pressure of decision-making. I’m interested in what happens when learning feels a little more like real life: incomplete information, competing priorities, human behavior, consequences. I keep returning to the same question: how do I build a learning experience that doesn’t just tell students what to do, but helps them practice becoming the kind of professional who can think in motion?

Alongside that are research questions that keep shifting shape. I’m watching how AI changes the experience of creativity and evaluation — not only what is produced, but how people feel about producing it. What counts as authentic? What counts as expertise? What changes when the tool becomes part of the process? I don’t have a clean conclusion yet. I’m still sitting in the tension, gathering examples, noticing patterns, collecting the moments that feel worth studying.

And then there’s visual work — design experiments that are mostly about atmosphere. I keep returning to soft layouts, fluid shapes, quiet palettes. I’m drawn to spaces that feel like they invite thinking. I’m not trying to make everything “pretty.” I’m trying to make environments where the mind settles, where the work can breathe.

None of these are finished.

But all of them are shaping how I think.

I’m starting to see that building a creative life isn’t about completing one thing after another. It’s more like layering — returning to ideas from different angles, letting one project inform the next, allowing the work to evolve without demanding certainty on a deadline.

This is simply a marker in time.

A note from the middle.