We would like to get a little bit into your background. What did you do before teaching and how did you end up teaching at NYU?

I've always enjoyed working in organizations that make positive change in the world. I worked at the United Nations for years in my earlier career, and then decided to focus my graduate education and career in education. At the same time, I have always loved to design things and am fascinated by technology, so ed tech was a great fit.

I care a lot about fostering creative and effective problem-solving among novice designers wrestling with complex design challenges. That and figuring out how to get well designed project-based and experiential learning environments to a broader spectrum of people. I continue to think that media and technology are going to be integral to scaling these approaches. 

Many people don't realize I'm an alum of the DMDL program, though when I was a student we called the program ECT (Educational Communications and Technology) before we branched off into two Master's degrees. After graduating with my masters, I worked for an ed-tech company where I helped develop teaching and learning tools including rubric builders, student portfolios, outcomes assessment to name a few.  I was there over a decade, and lucky to have been part of an amazing team of super talented colleagues. These tools continue to be used by hundreds of educational institutions around the world. 

When I left industry to work in academia as a professor at ECT, teaching was a jumping off point for me-  a new chapter in my life where I felt I could draw from all that I had learned about managing teams, creating ed tech products,  understanding the role of research and empathy and innovation- and share that with students will eventually be in a position to influence the the quality of education. 

I really enjoy product design work. I've become more and more committed to working with organizations that embrace diversity and equity in how they go about designing products. Did you know that closed captioning was only added to Youtube after one of their lead engineers, Ken Harrenstien, a deaf person himself, lobbied for years to have it added? Can you imagine our world without closed captioning? We use it for some many things. It's going to take a village to change the way that technology can really make a difference.

In any case, I love to think about how media and technology can improve teaching and learning. Supporting and mentoring students and learning from them as well, has been a really rewarding experience.

Wow! That's quite a bit of a journey - like transitioning from the corporate sector into an academic setting. As you mentioned earlier, Digital Media Design for Learning (DMDL)  was known as an Educational Technology program. So do you think DMDL could have another name in future?

It's a very interesting question! Our programs cover so many aspects of this field- from the design of learning experiences, to media and technology and everything in between (we've recently added three new specializations, User Experience Design, Learning Analytics and Online Learning Design). 

Our programs ground students in foundational learning theories and research that support effective learning design. At the same, time students get plenty of opportunities to apply what they've learned through hands-on design projects and internships and as mentioned, students get to focus their program on what's most interesting to them. It's hard to find a name that really captures all of this. 

There may be a new name in the future or we may continue to develop different tracks and specializations. Do you have any clever ideas? 

So, while the pandemic of Covid-19 is not yet over, what are some of the challenges you faced while teaching classes? Does it have any impact in terms of learning, or delivering the classes? 

I completely agree that we are still in it, which makes it very interesting to reflect on your question because it's just not answerable quite yet. We are learning a lot, all the time and the fact that we were fully remote from March, 2020, until the end of this past summer meant that we knew that we would have to completely innovate and try new things. Some might say you know we're better prepared than any other faculty for this kind of change which I actually think is largely true, though we've also learned a lot from other educators as well.   

In this remote modality, we tried many new kinds of teaching approaches, we used Zoom breakout rooms, we tried out new tools like Mural for collaboration and digital brainstorming. We started our weekly ECT coffee chats, a time to check in and get to know one another. Build community. We are still continuing that even now. A lot of our students that would have been in person in New York were not able to come to New York, so we also had time zone differences, but challenges led to some welcome surprises that we are now becoming our new normal. 

Are the programs designed in such a way that DMDL and G4L students from various backgrounds can collaborate together? 

We have a wonderful group of doctoral students so that are part of our ECT community as well. A lot of our courses are designed around project-based learning - enabling students to apply what they've learned to real world scenarios while in other more foundational classes like Foundations of Cognitive Science and Learning Sciences you're covering learning theory more deeply. All classes, though, include project work and collaborative teams so that's certainly one way that students are getting to know other students.At the end of every semester, we have a big public event we call the ECT Design Expo. That's where master's students showcase thesis work and get feedback from a larger community. We have a lot of faculty who have really interesting grants or projects they're working on we had recently a research day where and work some progress we're faculty shared what they're working on and also shared how students might be able to participate.

We've also had students create kind of student-led online communities - a WhatsApp which is just students, a group that's pretty active I think and vibrant in students have also suggested, sometimes holiday events and potlucks and things like that. 

 So, if a student wants to propose a new project or a new club, is there a way to do it, or just email or come up with a slack message to you or anyone else?

Yes! You can come directly to me or Jeneva and we can brainstorm with you on how this might be able to be possible. All students should feel free to initiate directly whether just post something on Slack or use the Whatsapp group or organize your own events.

And one of the anxieties for a lot of us, including me, is how to build relationships with peers, because it's just so hard to build relationships, outside the project work?

Well, I will remind you though that you're speaking as a student who's only been in the community for eight weeks. I realize it's also a bit more difficult right now for the reasons I mentioned that not everything is back to normal yet with having to wear masks, no food at events and all that. sIt take time to build and it's like when you move into a brand new neighborhood and the year goes by and then you realize, "Oh, I now know my neighbors and I just needed  time to figure out what I like and what events are most interesting to me".

How would you suggest students start to develop in their exploration of possible careers in the field?  

So, we've developed these resources for you all on our ECT student website (www.ectstudent.info) and we have a lot of information there.-for example there's a lot of information there about careers, sample jobs, alum stories about who's doing what after they graduate and lots of learning resources.

In January, we will offer a professional applications course with many guest speaker panels. But the other really great resource is the Wasserman center and that is the NYU Career Center. Whether you're working on your resume or your portfolio or whether it's interviewing skills or networking there are a lot of wonderful resources and workshops happening. I think one-on-one coaching at times which can be really helpful like looking at a resume with somebody who's very experienced can be a great way just to polish it and make sure it's telling the story you want to tell to potential employers.