Teaching Statement

How I get my students from "point a" to "point b."


Responsive devices

Teaching Statement

Design education resembles the professional practices of an architect. Designers of environments and interactive spaces go through a blueprint phase through to final implementation. Much like these methods require planning, teaching requires groundwork, scaffolding, and critical thinking in order to conduct meaningful teaching and learning experiences. Teaching is important to me because I am a builder, an architect of sorts, pursuing the development of students. My teaching resembles the building process. Investing in the minds and lives of others brings me great satisfaction. My long term goal as a professor is not only to teach artists and technicians their trade, but to instill in them a desire to become teachers of their craft, because teaching truly is the highest form of learning.

My role as an educator is that of facilitator and mentor. My approach to teaching has gone through a series of advancements with each passing year, but the one consistency is my application of the apprenticeship model, where I am able to model my professional experiences for my students' application. It is proven that students learn better when they are guided to discover and learn under the guidance of a mentor.

The transference of skills and knowledge from one person to another for the purpose of taking final form in a competency is the most challenging and rewarding processes for a teacher. This is one reason why I pursue the art of teaching. To me teaching is a dynamic collaboration between students, faculty, and professional experiences. I believe that effective learning can take place when the learner is stimulated with a variety of interactive learning experiences, whether  through discussion, lecture, kinesthetic learning with project development, or other forms of application, all leading to student engagement. I am an advocate for "learning by doing" and have seen its positive effects on my students who have gone on to become award winning designers.

From my experience I have learned that the power of interactive learning draws upon the richness of teaching and learning methods for multiple learning intelligences. Students engage more readily when invited into the learning process from multiple perspectives. This may be audio, video, text, and most importantly interactivity. From a standpoint of educational effectiveness, there are a multitude of touch points that interactive learning provides. Interactive learning promotes harmony in learning styles that develop and foster not passive casual thinkers, but instead engaged critical thinking designers, who are prepared for the challenges of solving the design problems of the future.

Knowledge is effective once put to use. As a professor I am constantly checking for feedback, looking for cues to assess if my students are understanding and applying information. My objective as a professor is to act as a conduit to understanding while students search and navigate through the maze of their career pursuits and how they will apply and relate information, techniques, and creative workflow methodologies. If I am obtaining and responding to student cues and feedback, I am able to better respond to student needs. Therefore I am constantly looking for indicators for student understanding. In order for me serve as a guide and facilitator my stance and approach needs to be flexible and nimble enough to navigate their journey with my students in collaboration.

Central amongst my list of teaching tools is collaboration. I view the teaching and learning process to be a partnership where teachers and students work together to better understand the implementation of principles, practices, and creative strategies. In order to facilitate this collaboration I try to operate at multiple levels of instruction in order to connect to the variety of learning styles that may be engaging with the course content and assignments. To create these connections I prepare a variety of learning objects, such as interactive discussions, lecture videos, and other new media in the teaching and learning process.

Collaboration continues through the grading and assessment process as well in the form of ongoing critique, either in a group forum or individually. My approach to grading is that it is part of the instructional cycle, where students are able to benefit from assessments and critique that tie back to learning outcomes. My grading typically involves the use of rubrics that break down the broad categories of concept and creativity, design skills, technical execution, and presentation skills. Students are given feedback based on specific criteria that they are given before each project begins. Once an assessment has been completed, students receive personalized feedback to help them understand their level of mastery of the stated outcomes and how they can improve upon their work for future assignments. Each passing year helps me understand the value of teaching through the grading process.

As a final step of integrated teaching, I weave in the principles of sustainable and ethical design practices as it relates to humanity. My web design students learn about web design software platforms and infrastructure that can be leased in co-hosted server environments. For example, my hosting company rents it's storage and bandwidth from an energy wind-powered server farm. My data infrastructure for healthcare and financial systems sits on a 130% wind-powered server farm (that not only neutralizes economic impact, but actually helps reverse it). For nearly three years now, my clients have not lost a single secure transaction or database record and have been a part of removing unneeded waste and negative impact on the environment, promoting harmony between technology and nature.

Whether teaching undergraduate students, graduate students, or doctoral students, I have found great success employing these techniques. Furthermore, my personal belief is that learning is a lifelong commitment. These experiences among others have strengthened my commitment to teaching and I am excited to share these experiences with the next generation of artists, designers, animators, and programmers. My teaching methods have been designed to facilitate a meaningful process of discovery for students that encourages student engagement while unlocking the potential for lifelong learning.

 

To see the results of my teaching in action please check out my student work by clicking here.



Research Statement

Emerging technologies are the primary focus of my research, specifically examining the interaction between people and ubiquitous computing for teaching and learning applications. When we further examine new apps and devices we see how learning can be made more engaging and effective. I have observed a consistent trend where engaged students are more effective and productive.

Over the past several years my core analysis has involved the use of interactive technologies and gaming to support learning. I would categorize my research into two broad categories: theoretical and integrated. In most cases, my studies have resulted in a combination of both categories.

In 2012 I had the privilege to attend the Summer Research Institute hosted by Harris Manchester College, Oxford University. While there I studied the history of the role of games in education. My goal was to better understand and explore the ways that analog games and interactivity had been used in academic institutions throughout history. My goal was to determine if there was a clear point of departure from use of rote memorization and recitation to the use of learning aids and games. I wanted to track down and find some of the earliest forms of analog games. I was able to do so with the incredible resources housed in Oxford's extensive library system.

As early as the 1700's educators were utilizing pop-up books, dolls, and other manipulatives to aid in the learning process. Other existing strategy games I found dated back further to 1600 BC. I was able to hold and analyze several of these artifacts up to three hundred years old in person for the analysis of the topic. This was important because I will able to experience the true kinesthetic experience they provided. The discovery of these rudimentary learning toys and games proved to be an excellent extension of my formal research conducted in 2010 for my MFA thesis, showing how necessary it is to have these supplemental resources to help student connect with the material and learn.

My thesis focused on the development of interactive learning games for children, in particular teaching language arts and math concepts through interactive learning activities on a location called Discovery Island. The written component focused on the challenges of creating developmentally-appropriate interactive activities in digital game-based learning. The visual component illustrated the development of game-based learning tools that attempt to promote effective solutions for interactive challenges. The focus of the game development was to create a game environment that is infused with perceptive programming logic that adapts to the learners' skills and knowledge levels in the pursuit of a developmentally-aware game-based learning environment. The research and design also exhibited a complete database-driven assessment model that collected user data and provided reports to parents and teachers regarding the learners' progress. The completion of my thesis resulted in a fully-functional learning game as well as the written component that formalized the educational theories at work behind the mechanics of the game.

My most current research has been in service to my current academic institution, O'More College of Design. I spearheaded the creation and accreditation of new academic programs in visual design in conjunction with the creation of the School of Visual Design. This work resulted in the development of a new B.F.A. degree in Interactive Design that is currently in review for approval as well as a multi-year implementation strategy for the institution in order to conform to accreditation standards as well as industry workforce changes for the new AIGA competencies for the designers of 2015.

Whether in the mode of education, industry or a combination of the two, my daily practice weaves together a pattern of ongoing research and application that is best described with one word; integration. By pairing art and technology together with these investigative methods I seek to aid in the development of effective teaching and learning in an ongoing fashion.