I am currently Associate Director, Learning Environments (Physical and Digital) at Teaching and Learning Services at McGill University where I develop university-wide initiatives to improve teaching and learning environments.
I have had a long 20+ year career in educational technology that has primarily focused on three areas: the design of effective physical learning environments (learning spaces, informal spaces, teaching labs) as well as digital ones (learning management systems, simulations, serious games, other learning tools).
In my tenure at McGill, I have managed a team of instructional designers and multimedia programmers and have developed many different types of award winning technology-enhanced teaching and learning projects for McGill including multimedia CD-ROMs, learning objects, simulations, and other on-line environments. One particular project won the Bronze Award from the Media Festival of the Health and Science Communications Association. I have implemented every single version of McGill’s Learning Management System over the last 20 years. I lead the team that designed and delivered McGill’s first four Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
Over the last few years he has been focused on designing innovative physical and virtual learning spaces. I am currently the Chair of two groups responsible for the selection, design and renovation of classrooms and teaching labs at McGill, including numerous new Active Learning Classrooms and Labs.
I have also spent most of the 20+ years focused on helping faculty take advantage of the affordances of these learning environments to improve their teaching. In my previous life as a student I was a Scarlet Key Society award winner for my contribution to McGill University, and awarded the Royal Bank Graduate Student Fellowship in University Teaching from the Centre for University Teaching and Learning (which later was changed to Teaching and Learning Services). I have also been a Faculty Lecturer at McGill for many years and have taught courses in the area of learning and technology.
My area of research interest includes the interrelationship of teaching and learning in physical (classroom, teaching and simulation labs) and digital (online learning) environments. I am also very much involved in the implementation of technology in education and instructional/learning design for on-line and face-to-face learning.
I am currently Co-Lead of the Learning Spaces Design Community Group for EDUCAUSE and is a member of core team for the development of the Learning Spaces Rating System (LSRS).
I have been using/designing with the web since the beginning. Using Altavista on my Mac Classic, before Yahoo and long before Google, I have always been fascinated by the connectedness of the web.
I have been working on my PhD in Learning Sciences for a number of years (dissertation writing) in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology in the Faculty of Education at McGill University. My thesis is examining the impact of the design of Active Learning Classrooms on instructor conceptions/approaches to teaching, their actions in the classroom and the student experience.
I am also a partner for a consulting company in Montreal, inov8 Educational Consulting, that specializes in using assistive technology to help children with special needs.
On this site I experiment with a lot of things. Twitter feeds, wordpress, plugins, css3, etc… Things may break, but it is a great sandbox to learn.
You can find all my social connections here. If you are interested in my CV, just contact me.