Instructional Design for Sensitive Subjects

Designing training that is engaging, compassionate and informative is key for instructional designer Hallie Martyniuk, principal at TD3 Consulting. She shares how working in crime victim services has shaped her approach to designing learning  about subjects that need to be addressed with sensitivity.

Show Notes:

Instructional Designer and educator Hallie Martyniuk shares advice on handling the challenges of delivering effective training on some of the most sensitive topics imaginable including sexual assault, domestic violence, and abuse. Her key points include:

• Trauma-Informed Design Is Essential: When creating training around sensitive topics like sexual violence or abuse, it’s critical to assume learners may have personal experience with trauma. Being trauma-informed means balancing emotional content with careensuring that scenarios serve  clear learning objective.
• Make Training Relevant Through Real-Life Scenarios: Adult learners need to see how training applies to their day-to-day roles. Even with dry content like policy and procedure, Hallie recommends integrating realistic situations to make the material more engaging and memorable.
• Engagement Goes Beyond Clicking ‘Next’: Poorly designed e-learning often feels like a glorified PowerPoint. The best training starts with real-life context, asks questions, and builds in critical thinking to keep learners actively involved.
• Work Closely with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): Instructional designers don’t need to be experts in every topic—but they do need to ask the right questions. Hallie stresses collaborating with SMEs to understand key concepts, vocabulary, and cultural nuances.
• Support Learners Beyond the Screen: Sensitive training content can trigger emotional responses. Designers should plan for this by offering resources like hotlines or support contacts in the “where to go” section and preparing facilitators to handle disclosures with compassion and care.

Hallie Martyniuk serves as a consultant for one of d’Vinci’s educational products, Mandated Reporter Academy. 

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Learn more about d'Vinci at www.dvinci.com.
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Transcript

Susan Cort: Too often training is packed with policies and procedures that don't stick. Reframing content through real life scenarios can make it meaningful and memorable for adult learners.

Hallie Martyniuk: If I have the ability to use my own creativity and to make package things in a way that adult learners are really going to hear it and it's going to have value to them, then I try to apply it. And so you can take policy and procedure and you can put it in a scenario that's a real-life type of situation that somebody will encounter in their work.

That will have a lot more meaning to them.

Susan Cort: That's Hallie Martyniuk, owner of TD3 Consulting and longtime educator committed to preventing domestic violence and abuse. Halle talks with d’Vinci CEO Luke Kempski and me about making her training programs trauma informed [00:01:00] and the challenges of delivering effective training on some of the most sensitive topics imaginable.

Next on Powered by Learning.

Susan Cort: Joining me now are d’Vinci, CEO Luke Kempski, and our guest, Halle Martyniuk of TD3 Consulting. Welcome, Hallie. Great to see you.

Hallie Martyniuk: Thank you and thank you for having me.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, so great to have you on today, Hallie.

Susan Cort: Hallie, talk a little bit about your background and your firm and, and also how your career began to form around instructional design, training and adult learning.

Hallie Martyniuk : Well, I actually started out coming out of college with a degree in elementary education, so it has been a transition, but, the basics that I learned as a teacher really set the stage for everything I do now. Um, I started teaching first graders and [00:02:00] interestingly, they have a better attention span than many adults.

Susan Cort: What'd, sorry? We weren’t paying attention. 

Hallie Martyniuk: But, um, I came back after teaching in Philadelphia and I was looking for another job as an elementary school teacher in my community. When I couldn't find a job as a teacher in my community. I accepted a job at a sexual assault program, and that's where it really all came together because I took my knowledge as a instructional designer and it started to come together with this very niche expertise that I have in crime, sexual assault, prevention, uh, sexual violence, violence against women and children.

I took that combination [00:03:00] and I went out on my own at that point, and I started teaching people who work with crime victims across Pennsylvania, and I found that I needed to learn more about the adult learner. All of my formal training was in teaching children, so I went back to school at that point and I got, uh, coursework in training and development and instructional design continued to build my skills and expertise around crisis and trauma and crime victimization, and the laws and the judicial system, and all of those pieces.

That's where I really became unique and I set up TD3 consulting.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, that's really great and many of our listeners are going to relate to that journey from, uh, being an educator or teacher to. Getting into training, but I think most won't relate so much to the subject matter that you've been working with [00:04:00] and I know some of that subject matter can be pretty challenging when you talk about sexual assault, domestic violence, other kinds of abuse. Um, can you, can you talk and you, you're also addressing such a wide variety of audiences who may be, uh, have different sensitivities to that material. How do you train different audiences about challenging material like that without upsetting them so much that they might get distracted from actually learning the part that they need to really learn from what you're teaching them.

Hallie Martyniuk : Uh, it's a good question. Um, a lot of people over the years have said to me, how do you do what you do? Um, because it, it is difficult topics. Um, there, there's two answers to that. One is that I tend to stay in a more cerebral place. Um, I am hired to meet the needs of my [00:05:00] client. My client has goals and objectives. At the end of the training or after reading the resource material, they want their people, their participants, to know certain things and.

So I stay in this cerebral place in terms of facts, information, and then it's, it's, it's how to teach it, which is very academic as well. The other part of this though, is that everything I do, I am very careful and very aware that it needs to be trauma informed. And what that means in essence is that I assume.

When somebody is reading something that I have written about victimization, that they may very well either be themselves a survivor or a family member of a survivor, or [00:06:00] have come in contact with these kinds of crisis situations that could be flared or triggered with the information that I'm delivering.

Um, I. I try to keep in mind that I don't want to revictimize anybody. One of the things that I ask myself when I am going from the cerebral to the emotional, which has a place, I ask myself, is this important for their learning? I don't want to put something that is. It could be very emotional or triggering for somebody if there's not a purpose for it, if it's not meeting an objective.

But at the same time, I think that even when you look at something as academic as [00:07:00] statistics, it, it can provoke emotion. When you think about, for example, how many children are actually suffering abuse or how many. Disabled people or at risk. I mean, I, I try to use information that will provoke enough that people will listen.

Does that answer your question, Luke?

Luke Kempski: Uh, yeah, I think that's what really shows the balance. Um, you don't wanna just be training on facts. I mean, you have to, there has to be an emotional piece in order to have an impact or to make it memorable. Um, but then at the same time, you know, having it be trauma informed is the balance that you're trying to walk. you, uh, obviously are very conscious of that in what you're doing. Um, I think the other thing you must have to balance is, is. You know, if you're dealing with regulations [00:08:00] and, different kinds of compliance issues, how you balance like the, kind of the details of that with the more applicable to the audience part that you're trying to get across and the, and to keep their attention as…

Hallie Martyniuk: Yeah. You know, sometimes that's not in my control because I may have a client who wants me to list. Stuff they want, they want it on the screen or they want it to be said. Um, if they, they want the policies read verbatim. There's not a lot I can do in that situation, and I am, I am being hired to do what they need, but.

If I have the ability to use my own creativity and to make package things in a way that adult learners are really going to hear it and it's going to [00:09:00] have value to them, then I try to apply it. And so you can take policy and procedure and you can put it in a scenario that's a real-life type of situation that somebody will encounter in their work.

That will have a lot more meaning to them.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, that's, that's perfect. And I'm, I can hear our employees relating as well as our audience relating to that kind of challenge of, Hey, but we have to put all of this into the training. Um, and then the, healthy friction that happens with the go back and forth, um, between the, the client and the consultant in

Hallie Martyniuk: Yeah.

Luke Kempski: OK, what's gonna have the most impact and what's gonna really the outcomes of the learning that you wanna…

Hallie Martyniuk : When I was in a training, probably, well, I'm not gonna give you how many years ago, because that would age me, but it, was need to know, nice to know [00:10:00] and where to go and. I use that all the time. I try to start with the need to know that's what has to be there. The nice to know is if you have extra time or if you can fit it in with it, with the where to go, which is the resources that you send them to.

You don't have to put everything on the screen. You don't have to say everything for it to be there. You can incorporate it in different ways and you need to prioritize, which is the nice to know and the need to know.

Luke Kempski: Great. Yeah. And I, um. Connecting with your background. So your background hasn't been in like law enforcement or in counseling or any of the, you're really able to relate to all kinds of audiences that you're trying to teach and you're using, you're interacting, I'm sure, with a lot of subject matter experts who do [00:11:00] have that background.

And your goal is to kind of interpret that in a way that makes sense for other kinds of audiences who are not familiar with that. So talk a little bit about. Um, how you work with subject matter experts who, you know, have specific expertise, um, and balancing, kind of capturing that expertise and translating it for the audience. I know like whether they're in law enforcement or you work with clergy, you work with, um, victims, even victims of crime, victims of abuse, and certainly all of the counseling that's, that's around those scenarios. Uh, how do you, are there, are there any like, uh. Tips you can share around how you work with subject matter experts as a consultant, as an instructional designer, to help translate that into effective learning for different.

Hallie Martyniuk : Sure. Um, I love working with subject matter experts. Actually, it's one of my favorite things because I love to learn and, um, it's always an opportunity [00:12:00] in essence. Um, I start with any subject matter expert by providing them with the goals and the objectives of the training because that's what everything has to stay under.

Um, and I ask, and so. I know what my client needs 'cause I have the goals and the objectives, and I may have a sense as to how to go about meeting these goals and objectives. But when I meet with my subject matter expert for the first time, I ask them what I need to know to meet those goals and objectives because I've very likely may have no idea, you know, you don't know what you don't know.

So I would, I often ask them in preparation for our first meeting to bullet list the most important concepts or the need to know and key words, phrases, [00:13:00] vocabulary that they think are particularly important. Um, I ask them to educate me if there are articles. Research books that I could be reading on my own to help me better understand.

Um, I, I go for that as well. But ultimately the process is to answer each objective, to be able to teach each objective. So I'm asking the subject matter expert to inform me so that I can do that.

Luke Kempski: So we've been talking mostly about how to manage kind of the subject matter. We haven't really talked much about the delivery.

From your perspective, what's the difference between a well-designed e-learning course and a course that is just, you know, the boxes, if you will? What do you, what do you look for there?

Hallie Martyniuk : I will tell you right up front that I'm not a [00:14:00] huge fan of e-learning, and that is not because it can't be great because it can, it's because most of it isn't. Most of it is. Nothing more than a spruced up PowerPoint presentation. It, it's like the equivalent of watching a talking head, except there isn't even a talking head necessarily.

It's just words on a screen. And , I am the worst student in the world when it comes to that, so I use myself as a litmus test because I know what I really can't tolerate, and I don't want it to be anything like that. Adult learners need things to be applicable to them. I always ask myself, what's in it for me?

That is what the participant wants to know. Subconsciously, at every training, whether it's in a classroom or online, every [00:15:00] single adult learner is sitting there with their arms crossed across against their chest and saying, what's in it for me? Why do I need to hear this? Why do I need to be spending my time here?

I could be doing do, do do? I've heard it a million times. So when we are doing e-learning, we really need to engage and that, and that has to be more than hitting the enter button. It needs to be more than five questions at the end of a training that asks questions that you must know the answer to, to continue.

And if you don't get it right, you get to do it again and again and again until you get it right. To me, that's the worst of e-learning. Um, I am a huge fan of d’Vinci’s Mandated Reporter Academy training, iLookout training. This [00:16:00] was probably the first time that I have ever seen adult learning theory and the considerations of the adult learner put into action. It starts out with a situation that is real life. It talks directly to the participant. It asks the participant questions. It engages the participant in critical thinking. It provides all the information a participant needs either via the actual training or with some of the materials that you can download from the training.

So the need to know, the nice to know and the where to go. It's all there, but it's packaged in a way that is honestly interesting. And I think that it is the model for me of what adult training should look like.[00:17:00] 

Luke Kempski: Yeah. Well thank you for that. And certainly always our intention when we approach e-learning and we've been at it for a long time, and certainly are always looking to, to have that, that kind of impact with engagement and relevance and applicability of what, of what we're of training on. I'm, and I know that you've been involved with a, with a whole wide variety of curriculum over the years. Is there anything that you're most proud of in terms of the kind of accomplishing, the kinds of training that you, that you really are, are proud of in terms of the end result?

Hallie Martyniuk : I think that the, the thing that stands out for me in terms of my work over the years is the work I have done with the military. Um. One of the reasons is because when I was brought into the project, which um, was a partnership between the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, the Office of Victims of Crime, and the [00:18:00] Department of Defense, I knew absolutely nothing about the military.

Nothing. I had had no experience with anybody in my life. Being in the military. I knew nothing about sexual assault in the military, so they really brought me in with a lot of faith and a lot of really good subject matter experts, and I was able to put together. A training that was meant for people who were in the civilian world so that they could understand the culture and the laws and the dynamics of sexual violence in the military.

And be able to be helpful to somebody who was in the military or is in the military who suffered sexual violence and who needed help outside of the military where they felt safer. [00:19:00] And this training, um, is being used nationally. It is being used to train, uh, the sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office of the DODs Hotline volunteers.

It is something that I really, sincerely hope is making a difference out there, and I'm proud of it.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, that's, that's excellent. And it, um, really does speak to the, the role of the professional instructional designer who doesn't need to have. Deep subject matter expertise, going into it to a project, and really kind of representing the audience, who, in a lot of cases doesn't have a lot of deep subject matter expertise on a particular subject, um, to, to get, uh, the best training and, and the best result out of, uh, out of what you're doing.

Susan Cort: I was just thinking the same thing, Luke. I mean, said that they, they had, you know, fate, they [00:20:00] took a chance on you, Hallie, but I think you're the perfect solution for that because, you know, understanding what the average learner might need, just like a journalist, you know, you don't know anything about the story and you're going in asking the questions that the average person would ask.

So, uh, you know, that's probably. Uh, the best recipe for successful, uh, training is to be able to ask what the learner might ask. So I think, uh, I think you did probably a great job with that, not knowing anything.

Hallie Martyniuk : Well, and you talk about subject matter experts. Luke, I needed subject matter experts to teach me the laws. 'cause it's a whole system that's completely different. I needed people to teach me the culture and I needed to know, and this is what most people would never know, I needed to know this from the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, and the Marines, because they're all different.

And they had different cultures and they're gonna apply the standards that are given by the DOD completely differently. I mean, I was in Okinawa, Japan teaching [00:21:00] this, and I was in Hawaii teaching this, and I was in Virginia teaching this huge differences of, of audiences and, and needs.

Luke Kempski: Yep. Great. Interesting project for sure. Uh, are you working on anything interesting right now? Anything you can…

Hallie Martyniuk : I just put the finishing touches on a training, um, that is dealing with people who have disabilities, and it was written specifically for, um. People, caretakers and, and professionals who work with them or care for them. Um, they're a huge at-risk population. And um, I found that really interesting because the geek in me got to learn a lot.

Um, and I just read, uh, just finished an article, uh, today, in fact on sex torsion. Which is, um, a shocking topic that I knew very little about. And [00:22:00] this is a problem that has increased 400% in the last six years. So it is very much a hot topic in the world of sexual violence and at risk youth in particular.

Susan Cort: Hallie, with all your experience over the years, what advice would you give to instructional designers as we wrap things up, thinking about, you know, how to take especially sensitive topics and create. Create impactful training to make a difference.

Hallie Martyniuk : Well, again, they must understand the concept of being trauma informed. I. That's something that there's lots and lots of information about, and I think that what I shared earlier about asking yourself before you put something that's particularly emotional into a training, ask yourself whether or not it's meeting your objectives or it's just sexy.

And [00:23:00] the other thing is, and I haven't mentioned this before, but when we're talking about. These topics of crisis and trauma and victimization. I think it's important to use the voices of survivors, and I think that that indeed can be emotional for sure, but I think it's really important. And lastly, I think that we need to be training facilitators, instructors, teachers.

How to handle a disclosure of abuse, how to handle a situation in a classroom where somebody is visibly upset to be able to respond to that. If you are doing this online, uh, perhaps there should be some, some mention of it and some information in the where to go, the resources [00:24:00] that will, uh, give them a phone number, a hotline number, um, an avenue to talk to somebody because we have to remember that the percentage of people who are victimized is much higher than we realize.

And if you're in a classroom, it is really almost. Without a doubt that there is somebody in there who has been touched by these issues and who may feel it be triggered by it, and, and you, you don't wanna leave them further victimized.

Susan Cort: No, you're not just educating, you're supporting them.

Hallie Martyniuk : You have to balance it. I mean, these are very delicate topics. You can't pretend this is not gonna touch people.

Luke Kempski: Well, it's been really great covering, um, what we covered today, Hallie, as I said, like, all the instructional designers [00:25:00] and learning leaders who've progressed from being instructional designers in different ways will be able to relate to how you've, uh, how you've navigated that over your career, um, and how you've applied some, uh, some of the principles to some really sensitive. Subjects and doing some really important work when it comes to training. So thank you so much for being with us on Powered By Learning.

Hallie Martyniuk : Well, thank you again for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Susan Cort: My thanks to d’Vinci,CEO, Luke Kempski, and our guest Hallie Martyniuk  for joining me today. If you have any questions about today's topics or have ideas for future episodes, please drop us a note at Powered by Learning at dvinci.com. And don't forget that you can subscribe to Powered by Learning wherever you listen to your podcasts.