Christopher Bergeron

Technology, Literacy, Creativity

Welcome! I’m Christopher Bergeron—an instructional designer, university program director, children’s book author, and full-time liveaboard sailor. This site is a hub for everything I do: from innovative online education and creative storytelling to salty tales from life aboard a sailboat.

Instructional Design & Technology
Remote Teaching & Learning
Sailing Content
Creativity Content

“Sailing Through Learning, Creativity & Adventure”

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Creativity & Children’s Books

As the author and illustrator behind the “Adventures of Captain Apollo,” I’m exploring the wild world of creativity, storytelling, and art.

Instructional Design & Teaching

I lead graduate and undergraduate programs in instructional design and hospitality management at Bellevue University. My focus is on creating meaningful, accessible learning experiences in distance education.

Life Aboard a Sailboat

I live full-time on a 34-foot sailboat, navigating the East Coast with my sons and our cat, Apollo. From maintenance to minimalist living, I share my journey at FromTheGalley.com

Distance Learning & EdTech

I’ve spent years shaping engaging online courses and leading program redesigns at the graduate and undergraduate levels. With a doctorate in instructional technolgoy and distance education it’s a real passion that I share here.

Newsletters & Writing

I write monthly newsletters for each of my projects—thoughtful reflections on teaching, sailing, and creativity. Sign up for the ones that match your interests or browse past editions.

Living Intentionally

Whether designing a course, parenting aboard a boat, or writing by lantern light, my goal is the same: to live and work with intention. I share thoughts on minimalism, purpose, and navigating uncertainty.

Watch, Read, Listen

  • Assessing Accessibility

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    ChristopherBergeron
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    One key component of eLearning that should be assessed before a project ever sees the light of day is the project’s accessibility compliance. In the United States if your project is touched by federal money chances are it’s covered by Section 508 which outlines accessibility requirements, and if not then there is a good chance…

  • Cultural diversity and removing barriers to learning.

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    ChristopherBergeron
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    Today I wanted to take an opportunity to talk about cultural diversity and the responsibilities of instructional designers to take cultural diversity into consideration to remove barriers to learning. This involves both language barriers as well as other considerations. Probably the largest consideration that I forgot to mention in the video is visual representation. Every…

  • Assessments and Rubrics

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    ChristopherBergeron
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      When developing assessments Rubrics are an excellent way to communicate expectations regarding performance as well as to assess in a fair and systematic fashion. There are times when an automatically graded multiple-choice test won’t cut it and so that’s where a rubric comes in. In broad terms, rubrics come in two flavors Holistic Rubrics…

  • Assessment and the importance of alignment

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    ChristopherBergeron
    in ,

    The concept of alignment is one that is critical to a good assessment. Essentially instructional designers need to ensure that their assessment and content is aligned to the learning objectives and the learning objectives aligned to the overall goal of instruction. If any of these are out of alignment the entire project can be at…

  • Assessment Step #1, Clearly Understand the Actual Instructional Goal

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    ChristopherBergeron
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    The first step of developing an assessment plan, and the first step of instructional design, in general, is getting a firm grasp of the actual instructional goal. If you’re lucky you will have the opportunity to do a full needs analysis with resources and access to the learners, chances are you will need to be…

  • What’s in that Pandora’s Box that is Assessment?

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    ChristopherBergeron
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    There is a lot to do in the realm of assessment, and instructional designers are expected to do quite a bit of it. Most instructional designers will have had experience with or exposure to The Kirkpatric Model, or the Kirkpatric 4 Levels of Evaluation and Assessment. There is more to assessment than just Kirkpatrick. In…

  • Where do programming skills fit into instructional design?

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    ChristopherBergeron
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    Where do programming skills fit into instructional design? This is a serious question and I’m sincerely curious. I’ve found that I don’t use my programming or scripting skills much in instructional design with the exception of some light HTML and some light CSS. So I’m raising the question of how important are these skills and…

  • Watch and Listen to Your Backgrounds

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    ChristopherBergeron
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    One thing that can be easy to forget when you dash off to do a video is to remember to watch and listen for your backgrounds. A poorly lit project or distracting background noise can cause costly rework in terms of both time and money. And the wrong type of content in the background can…

  • Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction

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    ChristopherBergeron
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    Today I wanted to share Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction which when considered in the design of a lesson can make that lesson much more effective. So just a quick overview of that the nine events are and how they can help make your instruction that much more effective.

  • Another Reason I love Zotero

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    ChristopherBergeron
    in

    Just a quick video on one of the many reasons I love Zotero. I find myself doing research often as part of my job and Zotero helps keep all of that organized. BUT it also can automatcially download the PDF files for the articles which means they are stored and synced to my laptop and…

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