I’ve spent thirty years working where teaching, learning, and technology overlap. Long enough to develop strong opinions, a healthy scepticism about vendor promises, and a genuine belief that the interesting questions are rarely about the technology itself.
I work at the University of Calgary’s Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, leading a team focused on learning technologies and design. That work shapes a lot of what I think about. This site, though, is mine.
Background
I came to educational technology sideways. My undergraduate degrees are in Zoology and Education, which isn’t the most obvious combination. It turned out to be decent training for watching complex systems behave in unexpected ways, which is basically what educational technology is.
My career in edtech started in the mid-1990s, when “online learning” meant building things from scratch because nothing much existed yet. I was part of early teams developing some of western Canada’s first online university courses, and later co-founded a company that built one of the first commercial learning management systems. Being around when the infrastructure was being invented gave me a perspective I’ve never quite lost: these systems are built by people making choices, and those choices have consequences that outlast the original intentions by a lot.
I went back to graduate school mid-career and completed a Master’s in Educational Technology in 2013, comparing online discussion environments in WordPress and Blackboard (which sounds duller than it was). That work introduced me to something I keep coming back to: how platform design quietly shapes the interactions it’s supposed to support, usually in ways nobody explicitly decided on.
A decade after that I completed a PhD in Computational Media Design, exploring how principles from video game design and research could tell us something useful about teaching practices. It’s either a genuinely interesting interdisciplinary insight or an elaborate excuse to spend time thinking about games. Probably both, honestly.
Work
My professional work is in learning technology strategy and leadership. Helping institutions make better decisions about educational technology, and helping teams do good work within whatever constraints those decisions create.
Over the years that’s meant building platforms, migrating enterprise systems for tens of thousands of users, establishing video and media infrastructure, coordinating emergency transitions (yes, including COVID-19), and developing institutional policy around things like AI, microcredentials, and learning analytics. I co-chair committees, sit on working groups, and spend a fair amount of time in rooms where people are trying to figure out what to do about whatever just arrived.
I’m also available for consulting work. If you’re working through a platform decision, a governance question, or trying to think clearly about AI in teaching and learning, I’d be glad to talk.
Research and thinking
My research interests are about how design decisions shape teaching and learning: in software, in physical spaces, in instructional approaches. The dissertation work adapted methods from game user research to study teaching practices, which reflects a broader habit of borrowing frameworks from outside education to ask better questions inside it.
I’m genuinely curious about educational technology and also genuinely conflicted about most of it. That’s not actually a contradiction. It’s the only honest position I’ve found after watching enough promising tools arrive, get implemented badly, and quietly disappear. The question I keep coming back to isn’t really “what does this technology enable?” It’s more “what does choosing this technology reveal about what an institution actually values?” Those are very different questions, and institutions usually only want to answer the first one.
Beyond work
This site has been running since 2002. It’s a personal site in the original sense: a place to think out loud, share photos, post links, and occasionally write something longer. I care about the open web and try to practice what I preach. Self-hosted, built with Hugo, doesn’t track you.
I’m an active cyclist, mostly in the foothills and mountains west of Calgary. I take a lot of photos. I tinker with small self-hosted tools, keep an Obsidian-based knowledge system, and experiment with generative and algorithmic art.
Philosophy
There’s a longer version of this on the philosophy page, but the short version: pedagogy and technology are fundamentally entangled, each shaping the other in ways that are easy to underestimate. Lasting educational change happens through patient, thoughtful work, not through revolutionary tools, however impressive they look in a demo.
In a field prone to breathless enthusiasm for whatever’s next, I try to bring the perspective that comes from having seen a lot of things come and go.
For publications, presentations, and service activities, see the full CV.