David Barras-Baker has been at the forefront of digital learning for over four decades, not just following the trends, but making history.
In 1984, while serving as an instructor at South African Airways, David helped pioneer one of the first commercial uses of computer-based training (CBT) anywhere in the world.
ADDIE on Steroids – About the Author
Working with the PLATO system developed by Control Data Corporation, he introduced a radical new way to deliver technical and safety training, long before personal computers became mainstream and well before the internet shaped modern education. In the pre-digital era, this was not just innovative, it was revolutionary.
David’s career has spanned continents, technologies, and learning paradigms. From those early days of cathode-ray terminals and hardwired content to today’s AI-enhanced micro-learning, he has consistently anticipated where learning was headed and guided others along the way.
His work has touched industries as varied as aviation, mining, government, and corporate enterprise, always with the same focus: making learning relevant, actionable, and deeply human.
Now based in Western Australia, David continues to push boundaries as a learning strategist, instructional designer, and AI prompt engineer.
ADDIE on Steroids is both a culmination and a manifesto, a guide forged from experience yet designed for what comes next. It preserves the solid structure of the traditional ADDIE model while supercharging it with agile thinking, automation, and artificial intelligence.
But more than a model, David’s mission is transformation. He believes that learning is not just about knowledge transfer, but performance improvement, human empowerment, and systemic change.
That belief has never wavered, whether he was designing for PLATO in 1984 or scripting AI-driven learning ecosystems in 2025.
When he’s not writing, designing, or consulting, David enjoys deep philosophical inquiry, crafting exceptional Gin in his home distillery, and dreaming up ways to make technology serve human potential, not the other way around.
