Instructional design program alumnus Lawrence “Larry” Swiader ’89, G’93 has built a career at the intersection of storytelling, education, and technology—a path that’s taken him from the early days of analog editing as a student in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications to leading cutting-edge educational projects using artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) at the American Battlefield Trust.
Today, as Chief Digital Officer of the Trust, Swiader leverages a blend of media expertise and instructional design to bring history to life for everyone from elementary school students to tourists to amateur historians.
Ask the Right Questions
A Syracuse native, Swiader first attended the University for television production. “I started my undergrad using a typewriter,” he recalls. “By my master’s degree, I was using a Macintosh, during the period that served as the beginning of what would become the World Wide Web.”
After earning his undergraduate degree, he worked in television production, before following his future wife—fellow Newhouse School graduate Zoe Leoudaki G’89—to Greece. There, Swiader began teaching alongside his media work: “I really loved the classroom experience, and I started to look for a way to marry those two worlds: media and education.”
That search led him back to Syracuse—this time to the School of Education’s Instructional Design, Development, and Evaluation (IDDE) program. “It was a great opportunity to go back home,” Swiader notes. “Syracuse’s instructional design program not only taught me how to use technology and media to help people learn but also instilled in me the importance of evaluation—how to ask the right questions and measure success. That mindset has stayed with me ever since.”
He next moved into the corporate world, joining UPS, where he developed instructor-led and computer-based training modules. One memorable module trained employees to spot over-labeling—a fraud technique—using a “Mission Impossible” theme to keep learners engaged. “You want to hold people’s attention,” he says about designing online trainings. “Gamifying learning is one way to do that.”
But history and cultural education were always his passion. An earlier stint at the Foundation of the Hellenic World in Athens—a virtual museum project—gave Swiader his first taste of what would become a lifelong commitment to museum-based education. “It’s really a labor of love,” he says.
Start with the Learner
“Syracuse’s instructional design program not only taught me how to use technology and media to help people learn but also instilled in me the importance of evaluation—how to ask the right questions and measure success.”
In 1998, Swiader moved to Washington, DC, to join the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. There, over the course of a decade, he helped develop digital educational resources that deepened public understanding of one of the darkest chapters in history.
That role was followed by another impactful chapter at The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (now called “Power to Decide”), where he led development of the award-winning hub Bedsider.org, a digital birth control support network.
“In instructional design, we talk about the domains of learning: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective,” he explains. “Behavior change happens in the affective domain—changing attitudes. That was the focus of Bedsider, understanding what prevented people from using birth control effectively and designing media that responded to those insights.”
Now at the American Battlefield Trust, Swiader continues to blend storytelling with strategy, overseeing digital tools and educational programs that preserve and promote American history. The Trust’s websites, mobile apps, and virtual teacher institutes all reflect his core instructional philosophy: Start with the learner.
Whether it’s museum visitors or UPS drivers, you have to understand the user, he observes: “Empathy belongs at the center of instructional design, design thinking, and even social marketing. Too often, we get excited about a tool—like AR or AI—and go looking for a problem to solve. I believe, first understand the problem. Then find the right tool.”
Ever More Accessible
Swiader’s work increasingly incorporates emerging technology—particularly AI. “AI helps us be more productive,” he says, pointing to its role in content generation and voiceover production. For example, staff use it to generate a daily quiz featured on social media. Creation of these can be very time consuming, Swiader says, but AI can create quick first drafts that his team can then edit and customize.
Additionally, many of the apps rely on presenting audio versions of stories: “Rather than be burdened by the cost and expense of using voiceover talent in every circumstance, we can now use AI and only hire talent when it makes sense. This new ability allows us to create more content—apps, web presentations—than we would have before.”
A concern, he stresses, is the ethical responsibilities around using AI. “We need to be transparent with our audiences about its use,” he says. “Still, I’m excited about the potential in AI to help us make history ever more accessible.”
A current project Swiader is excited about is “The Liberty Trail,” a mobile battlefield tour app and website that will soon include tour sites in New York State. “Nearly one-third of the battles of the American Revolution were fought in New York,” he says. This project will start with battlefield tours for the Oriskany, Newtown, and Bennington state historic sites before expanding to others, such as Saratoga and Johnstown. Each battlefield will feature a walking tour within the corresponding park and will encourage visitors to drive to partner sites, historic markers, and local museums.
Bring History to Life
Reflecting on his journey, Swiader credits his mentors—the Newhouse School’s Richard Breyer and Peter Moller, and SOE’s Nick Smith, Rob Branch, and Phil Doughty—for shaping his approach.
In fact, an anecdote from Branch about solving the “real problem” behind an issue has stuck with him. The challenge: A slow elevator. One solution is to replace it. “That would be a very expensive solution,” he says. “But another is to put in a mirror. This addresses the problem, which was not necessarily the elevator being slow, but people complaining about the elevator being slow … a mirror gives people something to do.”
He found this to be a smart example of how we’re designing for the wrong things: “We too often come up with solutions without trying to really understand what the problem is.”
As the US prepares for its semiquincentennial, Swiader sees digital education playing a critical role. “From Lexington and Concord in 2025 to Yorktown in 2031, we have an opportunity to help people reconnect with our history,” he says, referring to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “We’ll use audio and video storytelling, along with AR, to bring history to life. It’ll be like walking with the best possible guide in your pocket.”
His advice for current IDDE students? “Write well. It’s still the foundation for everything—from audio scripts to web content.” And don’t chase shiny tools, he adds: “Let the problem guide the solution.”
By Ashley Kang ’04, G’11 (a proud alumna of the M.S. in Higher Education program)
Learn more about the master’s degree in Instructional Design, Development, and Evaluation, or contact SOE Graduate Admissions at soeadmissions@syr.edu.