Entering Project

Chronicle

Instructional Designer & Learning Experience Designer

Erica
(Yue) Shao

Chapel Hill, NC ·

I turn learning science into real experiences — designing curricula, prototyping interactive tools, and building systems that actually help people learn. Currently finishing my Master's at UNC Chapel Hill, and ready to bring that work somewhere it matters.

View My Work Resume Get in Touch

About Me

Learning design that's
grounded in people

I'm an instructional and learning experience designer who gets genuinely excited about the gap between how learning is designed and how it actually happens. My work sits at the intersection of learning science, UX, and educational technology — and most of it starts with a good needs analysis and ends with a prototype someone can actually use.

I've spent the past few years designing and redesigning learning experiences across contexts: K-12 classrooms in Shanghai, EdTech platforms, and graduate research at UNC Chapel Hill. I've also led field research in rural Xinjiang on women's entrepreneurship — surveying 264 women and interviewing local officials — and co-designed a mobile app tailored to help these women explore vocational training and launch their own businesses. What ties it all together is a belief that good design should be invisible — learners shouldn't notice the scaffolding, they should just feel more capable.

I'm currently looking for instructional designer or LXD roles at organizations that take learning seriously — whether that's an EdTech company, a university, or a corporate L&D team building something worth building.

(984) 291-6230 Chapel Hill, NC

Skills & Tools

Skills

Instructional Design Learning Experience Design Curriculum Development AI Coding Prototyping Needs Analysis UX Research Data Analysis

Tools

Articulate Rise & Storyline Figma Canvas LMS SPSS GitHub Qualtrics AR/VR Tools

Projects

Selected
Work

Course Project

Chronicle: Collaborative History Annotation

A K–12 web platform that transforms passive history reading into collaborative inquiry by integrating peer annotation, AI-generated responses and summaries, an AI tutor, and an Era Chat feature that allows students to converse with AI-powered historical figures.

Learning Experience Design AI Coding Prototyping

Internship Project

Automation Assistant: AI Content Workflow

Upload a screenshot of any lesson content — get a fully structured, ready-to-use table in seconds. Built on Coze; 5× faster content production.

Workflow Design AI Tools Prototyping

Research Project

Women's Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Xinjiang: Heshuo County & Tumxuk City

Practical research on women's innovation and entrepreneurship in Heshuo County and Tumxuk City, Xinjiang — 264 surveys, government interviews, four case studies, and the design of SheRise (巾帼创梦).

Field Research Data Analysis Case Analysis Prototyping

Course Project

Exploring Landforms: Canyon, Volcano & Delta

A 360° immersive guided tour for upper-elementary students to explore canyons, volcanoes, and river deltas — combining interactive tagging, embedded videos, VR scenes, and in-tour quizzes.

Instructional Design AR/VR Tools Curriculum Development

Course Project LATEST

DiscussReady: AI-Powered Discussion Coaching

A web app that helps international students prepare for high-stakes classroom discussions. Built on the ICAP framework and SToG external scripts, DiscussReady guides students through structured pre-class preparation, script-based scaffolding, and AI rehearsal — transforming passive reading into confident participation. Designed and coded entirely from scratch.

Prototyping AI Coding Learning Experience Design

Education

Academic
Background

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Aug 2025 - Jul 2026

Master of Educational Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship · NC, USA

Relevant coursework: Learning Science, Adaptive Learning, Digital Design, and Instructional Methods

Shanghai Normal University (SHNU)

Sep 2021 - Jun 2025

Bachelor of Education · Shanghai, China

Third-Prize Scholarship from the School of Education (2022-2024)
Certificate: Teacher Qualification Certificate (Primary School)

Experience

Internships &
Projects

Resume

MetaMetrics, Inc.

Remote, USA

Product Management & Design Intern

Aug 2025 - Present

Conduct user research by aggregating and analyzing 7 years of profile and financial data from 374 clients; design surveys and interviews to assess product fit and technology readiness, and synthesize findings into personas and market recommendations for product strategy.
Analyze K-3 ORF landscape and school district RFPs, benchmarking requirements against company offerings to evaluate product–market fit and inform strategic alignment.
Contribute to the development of a parent-facing personalized learning assistant (launching) by translating research into product improvements through journey mapping, resource curation, and UX content design to improve accessibility and actionability of Lexile and Quantile measures.

Shanghai Huojian AI Education Technology

Shanghai, China

Instructional Design Intern

Apr 2025 - Aug 2025

Redesigned K-12 curricula in Math, Physics, Chemistry, and English — adapting 115 courses across 10+ regional versions to new standards.
Conducted pre-launch QA; documented instructional and technical issues before and after release.
Co-developed an AI-assisted workflow using an open-source agent framework, achieving a ~5x increase in content production efficiency.
Integrated content into an AI-powered programming platform; converted materials to HTML and debugged logic and syntax errors.

Hui Shi Primary School

Shanghai, China

Intern Teacher & Researcher

Sep 2024 - Jan 2025

Designed, taught, and iteratively improved standards-aligned Chinese Language and Literacy lessons integrating multimedia resources.
Participated in school- and district-level teaching and research activities.
Conducted a needs analysis on teacher professional development gaps; synthesized insights into actionable instructional design recommendations.

Entrepreneurship Training Program - Xinjiang

Shanghai, China

Core Team Member

Dec 2023 - Oct 2024

Researched rural women's vocational skill gaps through literature review, questionnaires, interviews, and case analyses.
Analyzed local industrial structures to identify high-potential industries and education pathways supporting rural development.
Developed a vocational education curriculum framework and designed a mobile app prototype for women's entrepreneurship support.

Contact

Let's
Connect

Open to instructional design and LXD roles — feel free to reach out to chat about a position, a project, or just learning design in general.

Name

Subject

Message

Course Project

Chronicle:
Collaborative History Annotation

Instructional Design AI & EdTech

Visit Live Site

Overview

What Chronicle Does

Chronicle is a web-based collaborative history annotation platform designed for K–12 students. Rather than reading historical texts alone, students annotate directly on the page — highlighting passages, leaving sticky-note comments, and responding to peers' interpretations in real time.

To deepen engagement, Chronicle offers an Immersion Mode that overlays AI-generated historical backgrounds onto the reading interface. An inline AI tutor answers contextual questions as students read — not by lecturing, but by prompting further inquiry.

The standout feature is Era Chat: students choose a historical witness and converse with an AI-powered character speaking from that lived perspective. A Teacher Dashboard surfaces engagement patterns and AI-synthesized summaries of class annotations.

Learning Theory

What Guides the Design

Theory 01

Vygotsky's Social Constructivism

Knowledge is co-constructed through social interaction. Students annotate to externalize thinking, respond to peers to build shared meaning, and engage with an AI tutor as a "more knowledgeable other."

Theory 02

Flavell's Metacognitive Learning Theory

Learners improve when they monitor and regulate their own thinking. Through annotation and AI-guided questioning, students identify gaps in understanding and develop habits of self-directed historical inquiry.

Features

Key Features

Collaborative Annotation Students highlight passages and leave sticky-note comments inline. Peers' annotations appear alongside the text in real time.

AI Response / Summary / Bot Auto-generated discussion summaries, AI smart-replies, and a dedicated Q&A bot that nudges students to find evidence in the article.

Era Chat — AI Historical Figures Students converse directly with an AI-powered character speaking from a lived historical perspective.

Teacher Dashboard Participation data, pinning tools, and AI-synthesized class summaries for responsive, data-informed instruction.

Internship Project

Automation Assistant:
AI Content Workflow

Workflow Design AI & EdTech

Visit Site * Site is in Chinese & may require login

Overview

From Screenshot
to Structured Table — in Seconds

Teachers shouldn't have to retype what already exists. At Huojian AI Education, every content update meant manually transcribing vocabulary lists, grammar points, and lesson topics from textbook screenshots into spreadsheets — a slow, error-prone process repeated across 115 courses.

This tool eliminates that bottleneck entirely. Built on the Coze platform, it takes a screenshot as input and outputs a fully structured, ready-to-use content table — no reformatting, no retyping, no manual steps in between. The result: roughly a 5× increase in content production efficiency, with fewer transcription errors and less downstream QA overhead.

Design Decision

Why This Approach

The core question wasn't what tool to use — it was where the friction actually was. After observing the content production workflow, the pain point was clear: the gap between visual content (screenshots) and structured data (tables) was being bridged entirely by hand, every single time.

The decision to build an AI-powered automation workflow rather than improve a manual template came from one principle: if the information is already in the image, the system should be able to read it. Three separate workflows were designed to match the three most common teacher tasks — each scoped narrowly on purpose.

How It Works

Three Workflows

Word Generation

Upload a vocabulary screenshot. The workflow parses each word, extracts definitions and usage, and populates a multi-dimensional vocabulary table automatically.

Syntax Generation

Upload a grammar knowledge slide. Image recognition identifies key rules and examples, outputting a structured grammar reference table ready for the course system.

Text Topic Generation

Upload a textbook page. The workflow extracts lesson topics and organizes them into a dimensional table — turning a page of text into navigable, structured content.

Research Project · 2023–2024

Women's Innovation &
Entrepreneurship in Xinjiang

巾帼石榴花，乡村"她"力量

A practical research study on women's innovation and entrepreneurship in Heshuo County and Tumxuk City, Xinjiang — combining 264 surveys, government interviews, and four case studies — culminating in the design of 巾帼创梦 · SheRise, a mobile learning app built for these women.

Field Research Rural Education

264

Survey
Responses

Research
Sites

Entrepreneur
Cases

Team
Members

Download Report (Chinese 中文) Download Report (English)

Original report is in Chinese. The English version is a translation — formatting or content discrepancies may exist.

Research cover — Women's Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Xinjiang

Overview

Why This Research

China's Rural Revitalization Strategy places women at the center of agricultural modernization. As urbanization has reshaped the countryside, rural women — particularly in Xinjiang — have become the primary resident population of many villages, yet their entrepreneurial potential remains underutilized.

A cross-ethnic team of Han and minority students conducted practical research across two sites — Heshuo County (Tachaqir Town) and Tumxuk City, Xinjiang — asking one core question: what actually prevents rural women from innovating and starting businesses, and what makes success possible?

A collaborative team of Han and minority students from Shanghai Normal University, united by a shared commitment to women's entrepreneurship and rural revitalization.

Methodology

How We Researched

Method 01

Questionnaire Survey

Designed around four dimensions — Knowledge, Attitude, Intention, and Action — collecting 264 valid responses to map women's awareness and readiness for entrepreneurship.

Method 02

Stakeholder Interviews

Phone interviews with the deputy town mayor, Party branch secretary, and Women's Federation officials; combined with on-site visits for community-level insight into local conditions.

Method 03

Entrepreneur Case Studies

In-depth profiles of four exemplary entrepreneurial women — documenting their paths, obstacles, and the conditions that enabled their success in the local economy.

Method 04

Policy Analysis

Analysis of national and local frameworks — including the "Rural Revitalization Women's Action" directive — to situate field findings within the broader institutional and policy context.

Key Findings

What We Found

📊

Awareness Gap Despite General Endorsement

Women broadly endorsed the value of entrepreneurship, but knowledge of the "Rural Revitalization" policy framework remained low — a disconnect between top-down policy and grassroots understanding.

💡

Willingness Outpaces Action

Overall motivation to start a business was strong, but concrete entrepreneurial action was limited — pointing to a gap between intention and the practical resources, skills, and confidence needed to begin.

🎓

Training Misalignment

Existing vocational training programs did not match women's actual literacy levels or learning contexts. Content, instructors, and delivery formats were all misaligned with rural women's daily realities.

🏠

Structural and Cultural Barriers

Heavy household burdens, traditional gender norms, insufficient social support, and inadequate policy outreach converged to limit women's capacity to pursue entrepreneurship — even when the will was there.

Case Studies

Four Women, Four Stories

Through field research, we documented the journeys of four model entrepreneurs. Their stories revealed a consistent pattern: success required the convergence of personal resilience, government support, and the spirit locals call "马兰精神" (Malan Spirit) — named after the desert flower that blooms in harsh conditions.

Personal Drive

Each entrepreneur showed that breaking from passive expectations — despite family pressure — was the essential first step toward building something of their own.

Internal Factor

Policy Enablement

Government entrepreneurship incentives — loans, subsidies, and training access — provided the structural conditions that made individual ambition viable.

External Factor

Institutional Leadership

Active guidance from local government and the Women's Federation created a credible path forward and helped overcome institutional inertia in conservative communities.

Community Factor

Malan Spirit

This local ethos of resilience — named after the desert flower that thrives in harsh conditions — gave women cultural permission and collective encouragement to pursue their ambitions.

Cultural Factor

Recommendations

A Three-Level Framework

National Macro Policy

Strengthen multi-channel incentives for women's entrepreneurship
Leverage local media ecosystems to amplify success stories
Embed gender-responsive provisions in rural revitalization legislation

Inter-regional Aid (对口援疆)

Deepen sister-city partnership programs between Xinjiang and coastal cities
Channel resources into vocational training infrastructure
Connect rural entrepreneurs with broader market networks

Local Action

Expand evening schools and skills training bases in townships
Invite successful women entrepreneurs as community role models
Foster "四自" spirit: self-respect, self-confidence, self-improvement, self-reliance

Extension

The App We Designed

The research didn't end on paper. Our team designed 巾帼创梦 · SheRise — a mobile app built specifically for the rural women we interviewed and surveyed.

巾帼创梦 · SheRise WeChat Mini Program | Rural Women's Entrepreneurship Learning Platform

A mobile learning platform that helps rural women in Xinjiang acquire vocational skills and entrepreneurship knowledge — at their own pace, in their own language.

Agriculture, Livestock & Crafts modules — structured learning tracks across the three most viable industries for local women

Step-by-step video lessons — each topic broken into short units with video tutorials and progress tracking

Community forum (论坛) — peer discussion space where women share experiences across townships

Personal dashboard — tracks completion rates per module and surfaces recommended next steps

How It Works

Enter the appScan the QR code or search in WeChat to open the mini program

Choose a learning trackBrowse Agriculture, Livestock, or Crafts — then select a specific skill

Review the course overviewSee the introduction, outline, and module breakdown before starting

Start learningWatch video tutorials, read illustrated guides, and track your completion progress

Course Project

Exploring Landforms:
Canyon, Volcano & Delta

A 360° immersive guided tour for upper-elementary students — combining interactive tagging, embedded videos, VR scenes via FrameVR, and in-tour quizzes to explore three major landforms.

Immersive LearningVR / ARK–12

Visit Live Tour

Overview

What This Tour Does

Students typically struggle to visualize large-scale landforms from textbooks and flat images. This lesson places them inside the landscape — exploring 360° panoramas of real canyons, volcanoes, and river deltas, with teacher-created annotation tags that guide their attention to key structural features.

Each module combines a formation overview, an immersive panorama, embedded educational videos, and a short quiz. The volcano module adds a FrameVR interactive room with 3D models of internal volcanic structures. Students close the lesson by creating their own annotated panorama.

Learning Objectives

What Students Learn

Identify three landforms — canyon, volcano, and delta — and recognize their major structural components.

Explain the basic formation process of each landform using correct scientific vocabulary.

Evaluate key environmental and geological factors — water flow, sediment movement, tectonic activity — that shape different landforms.

Create an annotated 360° panorama with 3–5 tags, accurately labeling structural features and explaining their significance.

Screenshots

Tour in Action

360° Panorama ViewTour interface with interactive annotation tags overlaid on the panorama.

FrameVR Volcano RoomImmersive 3D space with internal volcanic structure models.

In-Tour QuizShort comprehension checks embedded at the end of each landform module.

Educational VideoShort videos embedded within each module to deepen understanding of formation processes.

Course Project · 2026

DiscussReady:
AI Discussion Coaching

A web app that helps international students prepare for high-stakes classroom discussions — guiding them from passive reading to confident, interactive participation through structured AI coaching, script scaffolds, and voice rehearsal.

Prototyping AI Coding Learning Experience Design

Visit Live Site

Learning Theory

What Guides the Design

Framework 01

ICAP — Interactive Constructive Active Passive

Learning engagement progresses through four modes. DiscussReady supports the critical leap from Active (reading) to Constructive (explaining, connecting, debating) and ultimately Interactive (co-constructing knowledge in discussion).

Framework 02

SToG — External Scripts

Structured sentence starters and situational prompts reduce real-time cognitive load during discussion. Over time, as students internalize the patterns, scaffolds fade — transforming external support into internal confidence.

Core Flow

Four Stages

📚

ICAP — Active

Stage 1 — Pre-Class Preparation

The AI tutor guides students through structured self-explanation: summarizing key ideas, connecting concepts to prior knowledge, forming a discussion position, and generating counterarguments.

🎤

ICAP — Interactive

Stage 2 — AI Rehearsal

Students practice in a simulated discussion with AI classmates. Gender-matched TTS voices, speech-to-text transcription — a low-stakes space to rehearse before the real thing.

💬

SToG — External Scripts

Stage 3 — Phrase Stock

Students build a personalized phrase bank across five dialogue move types. Scripts make participation patterns concrete and ready to use in class.

✍️

Metacognition

Stage 4 — Reflection

After class, students log how the discussion went and receive AI feedback. This reflection loop surfaces growth patterns and helps set goals for the next session.

Features

Built-In Features

🤖

AI Tutor Feedback

Stage-specific questions, hints, and feedback that scaffold student thinking at each step of preparation.

🎙️

Gender-Matched TTS

AI classmates speak with gender-matched voices using the Web Speech API, creating a more realistic rehearsal feel.

📝

Speech-to-Text

Student spoken responses are transcribed and added to the discussion thread — editable before submission.

📂

Material Upload

Mammoth.js and PDF.js parse uploaded Word docs and PDFs. AI extracts key concepts directly from class materials.

🏫

Teacher Dashboard

Teachers manage classes, sync materials for students, and track individual progress through the preparation stages.

🏅

Scaffold Fading & Badges

Scaffolds reduce over time as students demonstrate mastery. Achievement badges mark milestones and encourage continued engagement.

Screenshots

App in Action

Pre-Class PreparationAI tutor guides students through 4 sub-stages — summarize, connect, position, counterargue — with targeted feedback at each step.

AI RehearsalSimulated discussion with TTS-voiced AI classmates — speak aloud, get transcribed, practice before the real thing.

Phrase Stock ①Curated sentence starters across 5 dialogue move types — ready to copy and use in class.

Phrase Stock ②Saved phrases view — personal bank of saved moves organized for quick reference during discussion.

ReflectionPost-class log and AI feedback — track participation growth and set goals for next session.

NotificationTimely reminders and class material sync notifications keep students prepared ahead of each session.

AchievementBadges and milestone markers celebrate participation growth — scaffold fading signals increasing mastery over time.

Erica(Yue) Shao

Learning design that'sgrounded in people

Skills & Tools

SelectedWork

Chronicle: Collaborative History Annotation

Automation Assistant: AI Content Workflow

Women's Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Xinjiang: Heshuo County & Tumxuk City

Exploring Landforms: Canyon, Volcano & Delta

DiscussReady: AI-Powered Discussion Coaching

AcademicBackground

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Shanghai Normal University (SHNU)

Internships &Projects

Product Management & Design Intern

Instructional Design Intern

Intern Teacher & Researcher

Core Team Member

Let'sConnect

Chronicle:Collaborative History Annotation

What Chronicle Does

What Guides the Design

Vygotsky's Social Constructivism

Flavell's Metacognitive Learning Theory

Key Features

Automation Assistant:AI Content Workflow

From Screenshotto Structured Table — in Seconds

Why This Approach

Three Workflows

Word Generation

Syntax Generation

Text Topic Generation

Women's Innovation &Entrepreneurship in Xinjiang

Why This Research

How We Researched

Questionnaire Survey

Stakeholder Interviews

Entrepreneur Case Studies

Policy Analysis

What We Found

Awareness Gap Despite General Endorsement

Willingness Outpaces Action

Training Misalignment

Structural and Cultural Barriers

Four Women, Four Stories

Personal Drive

Policy Enablement

Institutional Leadership

Malan Spirit

A Three-Level Framework

National Macro Policy

Inter-regional Aid (对口援疆)

Local Action

The App We Designed

Exploring Landforms:Canyon, Volcano & Delta

What This Tour Does

What Students Learn

Tour in Action

DiscussReady:AI Discussion Coaching

What Guides the Design

ICAP — Interactive Constructive Active Passive

SToG — External Scripts

Four Stages

Stage 1 — Pre-Class Preparation

Stage 2 — AI Rehearsal

Stage 3 — Phrase Stock

Stage 4 — Reflection

Built-In Features

AI Tutor Feedback

Gender-Matched TTS

Speech-to-Text

Material Upload

Teacher Dashboard

Scaffold Fading & Badges

App in Action

Erica
(Yue) Shao

Learning design that's
grounded in people

Selected
Work

Academic
Background

Internships &
Projects

Let's
Connect

Chronicle:
Collaborative History Annotation

Automation Assistant:
AI Content Workflow

From Screenshot
to Structured Table — in Seconds

Women's Innovation &
Entrepreneurship in Xinjiang

Exploring Landforms:
Canyon, Volcano & Delta

DiscussReady:
AI Discussion Coaching