Case Study: Professional Learning Blueprint Expansion

Broward County Public Schools, May 2025

The Challenge

In spring 2025, departments across Broward County Public Schools were directed to update their Professional Learning Blueprints for board approval. For the Department of Innovative Learning, this was not a routine update. With artificial intelligence being woven into the department's professional learning offerings for the first time, our blueprint required a comprehensive overhaul to reflect the new direction.

My colleague and I were designated as the department's new Professional Learning contacts and immediately handed one of our first major responsibilities in that role: a full review and realignment of the department's entire course catalog under a hard two week deadline to be ready for board approval. The day after receiving the directive at the end of May, we were already working alongside the district department that manages the blueprint process.

The Approach

My colleague and I worked essentially full days for two weeks straight, spending several of those days on site with the department that oversees the blueprint process to ensure we were completing every component correctly and meeting all submission requirements.

The scope of the work was significant. We reviewed hundreds of our departmental courses, making deliberate decisions about which to keep, realign, or delimit. Courses tied to outdated digital applications or areas no longer aligned with the department's direction were removed from the catalog. Roughly two thirds of the courses survived the review, leaving approximately 250 active courses realigned to the updated blueprint structure.

The blueprint itself required building out core components that would govern every professional learning experience across the department going forward, including needs assessment, content design, facilitation planning, implementation support, and evaluation. Each component had to be adjusted to reflect the addition of AI as a new pillar of the department's professional learning offerings, thus ensuring that the structure could accommodate the new AI coursework that would be developed in the months ahead. 

The Solution

The full review and realignment was completed within the two week window, meeting the submission deadline for board review. The updated blueprint was approved by the school board, establishing a unified professional learning framework that encompassed all district courses and created a clear structure for integrating AI coursework into our department's professional learning offerings.

Once approved, I shared the blueprint with our Instructional Technology Facilitators and content creators so that all new course development would align to the updated components from the start. This ensured consistency, clarity, and purposeful design across every professional learning experience offered by the department.

The Outcome

The approved blueprint provided the professional learning infrastructure the department needed to expand into AI coursework, which was subsequently developed and offered to staff across all 240 schools and the district departments during the 2025-2026 school year. By establishing clear components that every course had to meet, the blueprint elevated the quality and consistency of professional learning district wide and ensured that all offerings remained purposeful, actionable, and connected to classroom practice.

Our director expressed strong satisfaction with the work we completed under an exceptionally tight timeline, and the project established our role as the department's Professional Learning contacts going forward.