Client project · 2026 · Learning design · Ōtautahi, New Zealand
making voluntary online learning something teenagers actually want to do
Serious games
development
Futures thinking
tools
Social learning
activities
The brief
Getting teenagers to voluntarily engage in online learning is a pretty high bar.
Aerospace for Good is a year-round programme by Futures Labs HQ for Year 11 students in Ōtautahi — built around the idea that the local aerospace ecosystem is a lens for asking bigger questions: about technology, sustainability, ethics and what students themselves want to be part of.
The programme runs in three phases. I led the learning experience design and development of the online component: four weeks of self-paced online learning, completed before students ever meet the rest of their cohort. Everything that follows — the immersion visits, the 48-hour challenge — depends on those four weeks landing well.
"I'm starting to see aerospace as a web, with threads in almost every aspect of life."
A Year 11 student, 2026 pilot
Constraints
What made this harder than it looks.
Voluntary participation
Teenagers chose whether to engage. There was no grade attached, no teacher watching. The programme had to earn their attention every week — not just once at the start.
No synchronous attendance
Schools could not align student schedules across the cohort. Everything had to work asynchronously — but still create a sense of moving through something together.
Cohort before they had met
The in-person immersion depended on students arriving with something in common. The online phase had to build that shared experience before anyone had ever been in the same room.
The design
Not school on a screen.
Gen Z learners are used to fast, visual and highly intuitive digital experiences — and their expectations are high. If something feels passive or clunky, they're gone.
So the experience was designed to be self-paced but highly varied: short videos, provocations, real-world scenarios, futures tools, choices and reflections. Activities that ask learners to notice, question and connect ideas — not just consume information.
Social learning was built into the flow: at the end of each activity, students could see what the whole cohort had answered. The online phase levelled the playing field before anyone had met in person.
Phase 01 · design principles
Results · 2026 Pilot
What four weeks of online learning made possible.
94%
said the online phase made them more curious about aerospace or a connected field
2 → 4
average shift in "how connected is aerospace to everyday life?" before vs. after (out of 5)
4,200+
student contributions across the four weeks
From the client
"Carmen designed our entire online learning platform and used Questiory to turn what could have been a fairly standard online course into something much more interactive, thoughtful and engaging. It gave students opportunities to contribute, reflect, share ideas and see the thinking of others — which became a really important part of building the cohort experience.
What I valued most was Carmen's ability to understand the bigger educational purpose behind the programme and then translate that into something practical, coherent and genuinely enjoyable for students to use."
Kylie Horgan
Founder
Futures Labs HQ