As Learning Experience Designers, we’re often looking for meaningful examples that inspire us, challenge our thinking, and help us better understand the evolving standards of quality in our field. But more than that, we’re curious—what does it really take to stand out in a contest judged among over 1,000 instructional designers from around the world?
One of the challenges in our field is that most instructional design work is proprietary. It’s built for internal use in organizations and often covered by confidentiality agreements. This means we rarely get to see full learning experiences designed by other professionals—especially ones we can actually explore and interact with.
That’s was different in the iSpring 2025 Instructional Design Contest. Instead of submitting client-approved or portfolio work, participants were asked to create a brand new eLearning module from scratch, in under one week, using iSpring Suite. The contest provided the same starting conditions for everyone and led to a fresh collection of accessible and self-contained learning experiences.
For those who want to dive deeper—click through, interact with the courses, and see what a winning instructional design module looks like—we’ve compiled the full set here for easy reference.
2025 iSpring Instructional Design Contest Winners
🏁 Start Category Winners
- 1st place: Julian Brunke — History of Customer Support
- 2nd place: Michelle Wang — Digital Well-Being in a Connected World
- 3rd place: Jhon Velasquez Perez — Email Writing: Tips for Professional Communication
- 4th place: Andrea Varga — How to Recycle Household Waste
- 5th place: Sarah Denison — Pack Up. Learn How to Pack for Your Overseas Move.
🎯 Pro Category Winners
- 1st place: Diana Păun — Assertive Communication: Use Your Voice With Confidence
- 2nd place: Sana Sediri — Rescue Mission: Endangered Species
- 3rd place: Charlotte Eva Strohmeier — Diversity and Equal Opportunities With Inclusion
- 4th place: Fotini Sofouri — Get Discovered Online: SEO Basics for Beginners
- 5th place: Yann BONIZEC — Create Accessible eLearning Modules With AI
Explore hundreds of other eLearning modules
iSpring invited participants to include the links to their modules in the contest official Miro board – a space created for the participant designers to introduce themselves, showcase their work, and exchange feedback with the community.
I also started building a submission for the contest but didn’t make the final deadline. I have included it in a recent Toolkit article exploring iSpring’s new Character Builder tool. For my learning experience I combined my two favourite iSpring features, the character builder and the interactive scenario builder. I always enjoy testing myself under given constraints and this experience wasn’t different!
