“I approach my teaching as a designer — crafting powerful, compelling, aesthetic, and rewarding learning experiences for my students.”
Teaching philosophy
The influence of “the design way” permeates all aspects of my teaching, from how courses are constructed, to the activities students engage in, to how learning is evaluated. I approach my teaching as a designer, attempting to craft powerful, compelling, aesthetic, and rewarding learning experiences for my students. I expect and demand excellence of myself, and try to foster a learning environment where I model principles of effective teaching, create an inclusive professional community of practice, create meaningful learning opportunities for students, and demonstrate a passion for knowledge and learning.
Connecting technology to ideas
Technology is never the point; ideas are. I design so that a tool is reached for because an idea demands it — not the other way around.
Facilitating collaborative engagement with authentic activities
Students learn by building real things, together, for real audiences. I set up genuine problems and a community of practice, then get out of the way so the work can happen.
Modeling scholarship and passion
I try to teach the way I want students to think: openly curious, rigorous, and visibly in love with the material. If I’m not excited by the questions, why would they be?
Personal experiments with technologies for learning
I test new tools on myself first — failing, tinkering, learning in public — and bring those experiments into the classroom. I won’t ask students to take a risk I haven’t taken.
Courses
I have taught at undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels in educational psychology, educational technology, creativity, design, and media — as well as courses and workshops on creativity, innovation, and design for the MBA program at the Indian School of Business (Hyderabad) and the Executive MBA program at the Broad School of Business, Michigan State University.
Doctoral (ASU, 2021–present): at this stage the teaching is mostly doctoral mentoring — Dissertation (DCI 799), Research (DCI 792 / TEL 792), Reading & Conference (DCI 790), and Practicum (DCI 780) most semesters, alongside the DCI 691 Seminar and DCI 701 Transdisciplinary Seminar I. Earlier ASU courses: Education by Design (DCI 691, 2020) and Design in the Real World (DCI 580/780, 2017). MSU: CEP 917 Knowledge Media Design, CEP 956 Mind, Media & Learning, CEP 901B Proseminar, CEP 991A (The Real & the Virtual / Old Brain–New Media).
Master’s (MSU/MAET): CEP 817 Learning Technology through Design, CEP 818 Creativity in Teaching & Learning, the East Lansing & Traverse City summer cohorts, CEP 805/815 (MSUrbanSTEM, Chicago). Undergraduate: TE 150 (winner of the 2008 AT&T-MSU best-online-course award). Executive/Professional: creativity, innovation & design for the ISB Hyderabad MBA and the Broad EMBA.
Mentorship & students
The best part of this work is the people. Here’s a number that says it better than I can: of my 32 most frequent co-authors, 22 are current or former students. The mentoring and the scholarship were never two separate activities — they’re the same one. I learn from my students at least as much as they learn from me, and the proof is on every paper I’m proud of.
Note: starting list of co-instructors & collaborators across your courses — Danah Henriksen, Kristen Kereluik, Mike DeSchryver, Rohit Mehta, Jon Good, Laura Terry, Catalina Park, Leigh Graves Wolf, Ken Dirkin, David Goodrich, Sara Beauchamp-Hicks, Tianyi Zhang, and (ASU era) Melissa Warr, Nicole Oster. Prune to actual doctoral advisees, add the rest of your students, and note where they are now — decide if this reads as a named list, a photo wall, or prose.
Teaching awards
I’ve been lucky to receive a number of accolades for my teaching, including a Lilly Faculty Fellowship (2001), the MSU Teacher Scholar Award (2004), the College of Education’s Teaching Excellence Award (2006), the AT&T-MSU Award for Instructional Technology — twice, in 2008 for best online course and again in 2014 for best hybrid/blended course — and the William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award (2016).
Note: any teaching honor since 2016 to add? If not, this stands as your MSU-era teaching record.
Scholarship of teaching & learning
Teaching for me is not just an engaging activity, it is also a space for me to experiment and reflect. Throughout my career I’ve tried to document that process systematically — to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning. This has led to multiple publications: essays (Mishra, 2005), journal articles (Ferdig, Mishra & Zhao, 2004; Mishra & Girod, 2006/2007; Girod, Bell & Mishra, 2007), and book chapters (Mishra, Hershey & Cavanaugh, 2007; Wong, Mishra, Koehler & Siebenthal, 2007). A good example of how my teaching has been a site for scholarship is the learning by design seminars I taught — and, through them, the development of the TPACK framework.
Note: full citations for the SoTL publications above are still author-year shorthand — and any ASU-era SoTL (e.g. teaching with GenAI) could be added.