Tom Cheng (he/him) is a Senior Learning Experience Designer who builds learner-centered, accessible online courses at scale for higher education.
Tom is currently a Senior Learning Experience Designer at Michigan State University's Office for Program Development and Management (OPDM), where he partners end to end with subject matter experts to convert their expertise into structured, self-paced courses on Coursera, D2L, and SCORM platforms. As sole instructional designer on the Apple Manufacturing Academy, he has delivered 22 full courses to date, including original graphics, video, and assessments, with additional courses currently in development. From May 2024 to August 2026, he also built and led Spartan Learning Experience Design (SLXD), a monthly faculty workshop series, and he serves as Academic Development and Innovation’s Primary Digital Accessibility Liaison.
Tom designs every course around how people actually learn, not how content happens to be organized. He builds accessibility into projects from day one, applying WCAG 2.2 standards, Universal Design for Learning principles, cognitive load reduction, and evidence-based assessment design rather than retrofitting compliance after launch. Faculty who work with him bring deep subject expertise; he brings the structure, scaffolding, and pedagogical rigor that turns that expertise into a course students can genuinely learn from, then teaches those same strategies to the broader faculty community through SLXD.
Tom also co-hosts "What Now!? with AI," a biweekly podcast examining new AI developments through a teaching and learning lens, reflecting his ongoing interest in evaluating educational technology on evidence rather than hype.
Beyond his professional responsibilities, Tom holds the Cheng Ming Award, the highest undergraduate honor at New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and recently completed a personal challenge to visit all 50 U.S. states.
Tom holds an M.S. in Learning Design and Technology from Stanford University, a B.A. in English Studies, and a B.Ed. in English Language Education from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before moving into instructional design, he spent four years teaching English and Computer Science in Hong Kong secondary schools.
