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Plain-text format · Joshua Parkinson

Joshua Parkinson / educator & builder

Designed for
people. Built for
possibility.

I connect learning design, digital accessibility, and technology to make complicated things work better for people.

Director of Instructional Design · Herkimer County Community College

Explore my work

17+years across education
and human services

100+faculty supported through
an LMS migration

M.S.Information Design
& Technology

One connected practice

01 / Selected work

Big-picture thinking.
Hands-on execution.

From institution-wide systems to independent experiments: a closer look at what I design, build, and put into practice.

01 / Institutional leadershipAccessibility

Making accessibility
an everyday practice.

Leading a campus-wide accessibility program—and building the tools that turn findings into accountable action.

My roleProgram lead & developer
The workAccessRemediate + Access Hub

The challenge

Coordinate accessibility work across courses, documents, websites, an LMS, and vendor products. Findings need owners, practical fixes, and evidence of what happened next.

My approach

I co-chair the campus Accessibility Committee and connect policy, faculty development, technical remediation, and review. The emphasis is on accountable processes and explicit human judgment.

What I built

  • AccessRemediate: a Python document-accessibility engine that turns supported formats into a common representation and produces remediated files and fix guides.
  • Access Hub: a SvelteKit and PostgreSQL governance layer for action items, owners, deadlines, review status, vendor documentation, and audit history.
  • Faculty support: Deque University administration, accessibility guidance, and OSCQR course-quality reviews.

Automated checks and manual review have distinct roles. A scanner result alone does not establish conformance.

02 / Research into practiceLearning design

What if learning
felt like discovery?

A master’s thesis, a playable storytelling prototype, and an ongoing exploration of how games can shape meaningful learning experiences.

My roleResearcher, designer & builder
The workMyQuest → gamED

The question

How can game-based learning inform the design of hybrid and online instruction from the beginning?

From research to artifact

My 2018 M.S. thesis, Game Based Learning in Hybrid/Online Instruction, included MyQuest: a story-based prototype where dialogue choices build a D&D character sheet and introduce tabletop mechanics through play.

The continuing exploration

gamED extends that work into platform architecture informed by Bloom’s Taxonomy, Flow Theory, and Self-Determination Theory, including progress models and AI-assisted content ingestion.

This is applied research and prototype work. It is not presented as a launched learning platform or evidence of measured learning gains.

03 / Build the useful thingSoftware

Less searching.
More useful signals.

JobHunt turns résumé information into a structured job-search workflow, with local matching, deduplication, and an Obsidian-ready daily digest.

My roleIndependent developer
The approachKotlin · Android · local-first

The problem

A job search can become a repetitive cycle of searching, sorting, and re-reading the same listings.

The build

JobHunt extracts skills, duties, and certifications from résumés, searches job boards, deduplicates results, and scores matches against the profile. Daily digests become usable notes in an Obsidian vault.

Design choices

Local-first processing, no required account, and no LLM API in the matching loop. The public repository lets reviewers inspect the implementation and tests.

Explore the repository

02 / A little less telling. A little more showing.

Good design gives
people options.

A tiny interaction with a bigger principle: make the next step clear, offer more than one way to act, and let people move at their own pace.

Try this with a mouse, touch, or just your keyboard.

The accessibility principle behind it
INTERACTION LABNo timer. Your pace.

Build a learning pathway.

Reorder these three steps using the move buttons. There’s no dragging required.

  1. 01Explore
  2. 02Practice
  3. 03Reflect

Explore → Practice → Reflect

An illustrative design exercise, not a prescribed teaching sequence.

03 / The creative side

Serious curiosity.
Room to play.

Experiments are part of the practice. Music tools, games, and creative software help me explore how people discover, interact, and learn.

MUSIC / IN THE BROWSER

8bit Beatbox

Console-era sound, a chiptune tracker, and a place to experiment.

Explore on itch.io ↗
BIOLOGY / GAME DESIGN

Mutagenic Survivors

A roguelite inspired by real organisms, with an in-game Bio-Codex.

Explore on itch.io ↗
WORLDBUILDING / DESKTOP

RPG-DungeonDesk

Tools for building maps, worlds, and the stories that connect them.

Explore on GitHub ↗
Also in the workshopOVERCAST / cipher puzzles ↗Campus Hub / student planning ↗

04 / The person behind the work

An educator’s instinct.
A builder’s mindset.

My work starts with a simple question: what would help this person take the next step?

Across 17+ years in education and human services, I’ve worked in prevention, behavioral health, and advocacy; supported faculty and campus systems; and designed learning experiences for different needs and contexts.

At Herkimer County Community College, that practice brings together instructional design, digital accessibility, faculty development, LMS administration, and AI ethics. I also teach technical writing, first-year seminar, and wellness.

Building software makes those ideas tangible. My preference is for useful tools, thoughtful defaults, and technology that respects the people using it.

M.S.

Information Design & Technology
SUNY Polytechnic Institute

B.S.

Community & Human Services
SUNY Empire State College

Let’s make something useful.

Have a challenge
worth solving?

Learning design. Accessibility. Online learning. AI enablement.
I’d love to hear what you’re working on.

josh@joshuaparkinson.me
LinkedIn ↗GitHub ↗itch.io ↗