The best thing about teaching is not a thing. It's the students.

I discovered my passion for teaching quite by accident in a classroom at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Vancouver back in 2007. This unexpected encounter with teaching & learning has blossomed into a rewarding career that continues to inspire me. My journey took me to Ontario, where, from 2012–2021, I was a lecturer at the University of Waterloo's School of Interaction Design and Business and Business and Business and the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business. I returned to Vancouver to pursue a doctorate in education, joining the University of British Columbia (UBC) as a PhD student and also accepting a position as a lecturer, teaching UX courses at the School of Information.

Oh, and I read voraciously and drink copious amounts of coffee.

I take great pleasure in reading and I wanted to inspire the same in my students. Reading, especially when assigned by an instructor, is not the first choice for many of my students, so I had to be a bit sneaky to inspire them to read. Each student team picked a book to read over the semester on a topic that interested them then they had to conduct an interactive virtual book club for the class on Zoom.

We worked on Oxford University's Map the System as the class project and the students used a topic from their chosen book for this competition. The books I picked for this course were:

GBDA 302: Global Digital Project

A bookclub disguised as a university course

Virtual Book Club on the book "Invisible Women" by Caroline Criado Perez

Interactive Bookclub

University of Waterloo, School of Interaction Design and Business

Ideating with Crazy8s

University of Waterloo, School of Interaction Design and Business

Interactive Learning

University of Waterloo, School of Interaction Design and Business

Students-as-partners (SaP)

I am currently preparing my PhD thesis proposal for my committee. My study is all about making assessment in design education more engaging and fair by involving students directly in the process. In today's complex and fast-paced world, it is crucial for students to develop skills that go beyond the classroom and textbooks, like teamwork and creative problem-solving. This is why I'm planning to focus my thesis on project-based learning (PjBL), particularly as it relates to design education, where students work in inter-disciplinary teams on real-world projects and learn through doing.

I aim to change the way we assess students in PjB design education by integrating them into a students-as-partners (SaP) framework. Recognizing the dynamic and complex nature of the 21st-century learning environment, I aim to engage students actively in designing assessments that reflect their individual and team contributions.

This way, assessments are not only fairer but also more relevant to what they'll face in their design careers. By getting students involved, I hope to make learning more interesting and meaningful for them, boosting student motivation and encouraging critical thinking.The goal is to prepare students to tackle complex problems that don't have easy answers (aka wicked problems). This approach ensures that students are ready for the real-world challenges they'll encounter after graduation.

Vancouver, July 2024

I created this course to bring undergraduate students from every faculty and year together. So I designed BET 350: Customer Experience Design, a course open to any undergrad student at the university. My classroom is teeming with different ideas, backgrounds, disciplines, lenses, and experiences. Students stem (rather, STEAM) from math, engineering, science, environmental studies, accounting, design, history, philosophy, business, and everything in between. All these different lenses make for interesting conversations and final projects. Since moving back to Vancouver in 2021, the course has found a new home online. Everybody is welcome, the prerequisites are curiosity and a willingness to learn.

Good things happen at intersections

BET 350: Customer Experience Design

Red Teaming with the GBDA class of 2020

The idea of Red Teaming stems from cybersecurity, where internal teams are tasked with breaking into an organization's systems to identify flaws. I used this technique in week eight of a 12-week design capstone course to help students identify weaknesses in their thinking and ultimately make their business model and final prototypes so much stronger. I asked them the day before to dress in all red without telling them why. Then on the day, I introduce the topic of Red Teaming and pair each team with another and let them poke holes into each other's prototypes. Every time I run this class, I see tremendous improvements in the students' projects. Nothing beats looking at our own projects with fresh eyes. If you're interested in this method and would like to try it out in your teams, send me an email and I'll be happy to share what I know. And here is an excellent book that will get you started: Red Teaming: How your business can conquer the competition by Bryce G. Hoffman

GBDA 401 & 402: Design Capstone

Good critique makes a project stronger