Punya Mishra is Director of Innovative Learning Futures at the Learning Engineering Institute (LEI) and Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching & Learning Innovation at Arizona State University (with an affiliate appointment in the Design School).
He is internationally recognized for his work in educational technology; the role of creativity and aesthetics in learning; and the application of collaborative, design-based approaches to educational innovation. He has received over $11 million in grants; published over 200 articles and edited 5 books. A recipient of AECT’s David H. Jonassen Excellence in Research Award, with over 67,000 citations of his research, he is ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide (#91 in social science) and ranked #62 (#11 in psychology) among educational scholars with the biggest influence on educational practice and policy.
Punya has extensive leadership experience in higher education, having previously served as Associate Dean of Scholarship & Innovation (at MLFTC), where he led a range of initiatives that provided a future-forward, equity driven, approach to inter/trans-disciplinary educational research. He has also served as director of doctoral programs (at MLFTC) and the award-winning Master of Arts in Educational Technology program (at Michigan State). He currently is a member of the steering committee of ASU’s Leadership Academy, AACTE’s Technology and Innovation Committee, and editor-in-residence for the Journal of Teacher Education.
An AERA Fellow (2024), TED-Ed educator (2023), he co-hosts the award-winning Silver Lining for Learning webinar as well as the Learning Futures podcast. He is an award-winning instructor, an engaging public speaker, and an accomplished visual artist and poet.
Must reads
Webinars & Podcasts:
Value Laden (archived)
Apple | Spotify | Simplecast
Blog Posts
Human Creativity to the Power of AI: The Event
When Nicole Oster, Lindsey McCaleb and were discussing the design of DCI691: Human Creativity × AI in Education before this semester started, we envisioned a space where we (students and faculty alike) could collectively explore the fascinating boundaries between...
Designing for Creative Learning: New book chapter
I'm excited to share my recent work with colleagues Richard West, Jason McDonald, and Melissa Warr exploring how instructional designers can intentionally foster creativity through Gl?veanu's 5A Framework. It was published in the prestigious Oxford Handbook of...
Technology Transforms Learning: Insights from the 2025 Yidan Prize Conference
I recently participated in the 2025 Yidan Prize Conference hosted by the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Arizona State University. In large part this conference was a celebration of my colleague Micky Chi, recepient of the 2023 Yidan...
On the Ethical Perils of Mass-Produced Books: A Concerned Scholar’s View
The prose below is from a manuscript that was recently discovered in the archives of the Indian National History Museum. It was found among papers donated in 1923 by the estate of Colonel Jackson Vivian Quill III of the Royal Fusiliers, who served in British India...
ASU-Cintana Innovation Talk for Faculty: Education in an Age of GenAI
I was recently invited to speak on the topic of "Education in an Age of Generative AI" at a special webinar series organized by the ASU-Cintana Alliance. In this talk, I explored both the potential and considerations surrounding Generative AI in education, emphasizing...
Human Creativity^AI: Team Energy Blog post
Below is Team Energy's blog post for my Human Creativity x AI for Education class. In the urge to top every other group in class, Team Energy decided to write two posts - one in third person and the other through their individual voices and perspectives. I have...
Irresistible by Design: AI Companions as Psychological Supernormal Stimuli
In a previous blog post (Supernormal Stimuli: From Birds to Bots) I had written about the idea of super normal stimuli – a term was first introduced by the Nobel prize winning ethologist Nico Tinbergen. His research showed that animals often responded more strongly to...
A New Definition of Literacy
Note: For some context on the title image (above) please see an addendum at the end of this post. This past Friday was AI Literacy day, and I was invited, along with Ian O’Byrne (College of Charleston) to participate in a webinar on the topic. Readers of this blog...
SITE 2025: Lost and Found
I spent the last week in Orlando at the SITE 2025 conference. During this conference, I set a new personal record for losing everything from my belongings to an election, from water bottles to conference panelists and more - all leading to unexpected tensions and...
… or check out some random blog posts
Post-lunch session: Geetha Narayanan
Geetha Narayanan, Director Mallya Aditi International School and Srishti School of Art Design and Technology, is someone I have wanted to meet for a long time. One of the pleasures of of this conference is getting an opportunity to hear her speak ... and I was not...
EPET in the Spotlight!
The current issue of TechTrends (Volume 57, Issue 3, March 2013) is a special spotlight issue, and the spotlight this time around is on the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology Programs at Michigan State University! This special spotlight issue was edited...
ISTE LIVE 24: Denver
Melissa Warr and I were in Denver earlier this week for the ISTE 2024 conference. We were there to receive the Outstanding Research Paper award from the Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, for our paper TPACK in an age of ChatGPT and generative AI....
What is the value of a theoretical framework?
One question that all doctoral students dread (and rightfully so) is "What is your theoretical framework?" Why, they wonder (silently), why do we need a framework? This question popped up recently in, of all places, Facebook. Pilar Quezzaire, a graduate of our MAET...
New media, new genres
There is an interesting article in today's NYTimes titled Content and its discontents by Virginia Heffernan. In this article she makes the argument the new digital, online media require new ways of representing information, new ways of thinking about how ideas are...
Sine Language: Circling Pythagoras Through Sound and Color
This semester I am teaching a course on Human Creativity X AI in Education. (More about our first week here.) A key focus of the class is on the idea of transdisciplinary creativity – that of bringing different lenses and senses to the process of learning and...
All you can cheat, the web & learning
Now here's an important story coming out of Denmark: Students in Denmark Allowed Full Access to the Internet During Exams I have always been a believer in allowing students to use any resources they can during examinations. If we care about authentic assessment, what...
TPCK book signing
One of the important events at the New Orleans AACTE meeting was the release of the TPCK Handbook for Educators and the book signing. This was the first time I had ever participated in a book signing and it was great fun. Here are some photographs from the event......
GenAI is Racist. Period.
Note: The shared blogging with Melissa Warr and Nicole Oster continues. I crafted the student essay, Melissa generated the data using her magical GPT skills. I wrote the first draft which was then edited by Melissa and Nicole. Imagine you are a...