Crystal Donlan

Crystal Donlan – founder, CEO, and Chief Creative Officer of Clarity Learning Design (LLC) is a learning scientist and passionate ally of equitable learning; she has dedicated her life’s work to facilitating transformative, accessible, human-centered learning experiences at all levels of experience and ability. Coping with the complexities of teaching and learning as an immune-compromised professional, Crystal became interested in distance education and began exploring the remote facilitation of meaningful learning experiences in order to continue her life’s passion. Crystal’s primary research areas are the literacies – specifically modern literacies focused on information acquisition, digital proficiencies, and media utilization – and enhancing those literacies and other 21st century skills through self-paced, digitally scaffolded learning journeys. Crystal continues to study how these experiences enhance student competencies, influence transactional distance, and enrich the learning landscape; she hopes to continue exploring how literacy-based online initiatives may improve student outcomes in hybrid-delivery and distance learning settings.

An educator for over 20 years, Crystal has taught in K-12, correctional, community-based, and – most frequently – higher education settings, where she has facilitated face-to-face, hybrid, and online learning. A champion for teaching and learning at all levels, Crystal has spent the last two years building abundant professional development resources and delivering practice-based learning experiences for fellow faculty. Touting her theory that the pandemic made her professionally relevant, Crystal daily endeavors to make a difference as a thought leader, equity advocate, change agent, and learning architect in higher education. Her most recent project, an original concept called “mindful scaffolding,” was born of a desire to humanize online learning environments and facilitate compassionate allowances to optimize student-centered distance learning. Crystal has also been certified in secondary English instruction by the PDE since 2004, in 2020 became a National Geographic certified educator, and in 2021 became a QM certified higher education peer reviewer.