Learning program design & leadership
Certified instructional designer (M.A. Ed Tech). Curriculum, train-the-trainer systems, and programs your team can keep running without me.
In practice: AlphaNumérique · Hackergal
Learning design · Infrastructure · Montréal
I design learning programs and build the structure that sustains them
Consultant and program director for learning teams and mission-driven organizations, from curriculum and facilitation to knowledge commons, evaluation systems, and the tools that track results.
Email mehello@arielharlap.com
Worked with
- Hackergal
- Concordia University
- City of Montréal
- Fondation du Grand Montréal
- Daro (formerly Ajah)
- Social Impact Consulting
- Visual Arts Centre
- Solon Collective
- Saltwater Consulting
- Canadian Centre for Housing Rights
- City of Toronto
- Centre for Community Organizations (COCo)
What I do
I work collaboratively and transparently, and design with the people the work affects — not just for them.
Learning communities & co-development
Communities of practice, peer networks, and working groups, seeded and sustained: relational learning that generates initiatives of its own.
In practice: Concordia CTL
Learning infrastructure & tools
Knowledge bases, evaluation dashboards, learning trackers, participatory web resources. Open-source or shareable when possible, documented so they outlast the engagement.
In practice: Proof · storiesofmen.org
Operations & evaluation
The systems behind the program: team workflows, documentation, funder reporting, and evaluation loops that tell you honestly what's working.
In practice: Innovation Lab
Selected work
Human rights e-learning
Canadian Centre for Housing Rights: a right-to-housing course for City staff
Designed and built a self-paced course on applying a human rights-based approach to housing, for City of Toronto staff across many divisions.
Two-hour narrated self-paced course for about 1,000 City of Toronto staff, launching fall 2026.
AI literacy
Hackergal: a self-paced AI literacy course
Designed a self-paced AI literacy course for an organization engaging girls and gender-nonconforming youth in technology.
Full course shipped end-to-end: scoping, design, build, and delivery.
Program direction
AlphaNumérique: digital literacy at provincial scale
Directed a train-the-trainer program enabling 50+ public libraries and community organizations to deliver localized digital literacy training across Québec and francophone Canada.
11,500 participations in 1,300+ workshops on a $3M budget. That was a third of the federal program's participants on a tenth of its funding.
Slated for relaunch in BiblioPresto's 2025–2028 plan
Educational development
Concordia CTL: educational development for faculty
Educational development at the Centre for Teaching and Learning: communities of practice, hyflex training, peer mentorship, and open educational resources.
3 communities of practice, two of which seeded initiatives of their own, a deployed hyflex training method, and five open textbooks.
Two of its communities of practice still meet
Evaluation & research
Innovation Lab: redesigning how students learn to innovate
Coordinated an essential-skills program for multidisciplinary student teams working on sociotechnical challenges, and built the instruments to measure what changed.
Every survey respondent reported the experience as overwhelmingly positive (83% of students responded), and the method became a peer-reviewed publication.
Still running and recruiting students
Fast program design
Continuing Education: a cybersecurity certificate for non-technical professionals
Designed the instructional sequencing and pedagogical architecture for a pilot certificate in cybersecurity for non-technical professionals, on an accelerated timeline.
Shipped on its accelerated timeline; the certificate is still offered today.
Certificate still offered
Product & engineering
Photonic Knowledge: a mobile geoscience lab
Directed R&D and the engineering team at a hyperspectral imaging startup: software roadmap, scientific programming, deployment, and support.
Core analysis in about a week instead of four to twelve, at a tenth of the cost per metre. One patent filed; Deloitte Technology Fast 50 (2012).
Working on something like this? I'd like to hear about it. hello@arielharlap.com
For current availability and what I'm open to, see the now page.
Current projects
Praxity
The free toolchain for learning designers and their AI agents: write, review, check and track eLearning courses.
Design guidelines
Shared design guidelines and a design selector for learning content, built in the open at Learn in the Open.
storiesofmen.org
Learning experiences, website, and information architecture for Stories of Men, a community-driven project exploring relational manhood in media.
Publications & presentations
- Co-designing an action-oriented instructional design community: Applying the Design Justice Network PrinciplesJournal of Applied Instructional Design, 13(1) · 2023 · Archambault, Collier, Harlap, et al.
- A living lab approach to prepare students to be confident innovatorsRevue Interventions économiques, 68 · 2022 · Davidson, Harlap & Bhuiyan
- Intentionally Equitable Hospitality (IEH) in hybrid and flexible gatheringsLightning talk, Making Change, Taking Space · 2024 · Guan & Harlap
- Comment faire du changement en bibliothèqueCongrès des professionnels et professionnelles de l'information · 2018 · Harlap & Barlet
About
I've spent 11 years designing learning programs and developing the underlying systems, structures, and teams: six years co-leading a digital literacy nonprofit that I restarted and grew to a staff of 24, four years in faculty development and student skills programs at Concordia, and a year directing programs at a national AI literacy organization.
Before that I directed R&D at a deep-tech startup and filed a patent on hyperspectral imaging, which is why I'm comfortable with educators and engineers alike.
What drives me is to collaboratively build things that make learning meaningful and memorable. In practice that means train-the-trainer systems, communities of practice, evaluation loops, and intuitive documentation. I work in English and French, based in Tiohtià:ké/Montréal.
Contact
Email is the best way to reach me.
For what I'm working on right now (and what I'm open to), see the now page.