Teaching & Learning Design
I teach as a facilitator and mentor, grounded in constructivist learning theory and cognitive science. Most of my teaching is informal: supporting self-regulated learning for adults and students who choose to participate, through live webinars, online learning campaigns, a podcast, and the student interns I supervise.
Currently Teaching
Through the University of Illinois System's Student Money Management Center, I teach adults and students who choose to be there, through live sessions, online campaigns, and audio.
Get Savvy Webinar Series
A statewide webinar series I coordinate with financial educators across Illinois, running since 2013, with monthly live sessions each fall and spring and recordings afterward.
Understand Your Refund & Know What You Owe
Two semiannual learning campaigns delivered through Qualtrics to keep barriers to participation low. Students work through short online lessons on managing a student account refund and on finding accurate student loan information, then check what they learned.
Campaigns pageMaking Cents of Money
A financial education podcast produced in partnership with the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
Watch the Webinars
Recordings from the Get Savvy series play below. Use the playlist button in the top corner of the player to browse every session.
Coming January 2027
Critical Thinking in the Age of Data & AI
Charts, dashboards, and AI-generated content are everywhere, but how do you know what to trust? A six-session course for small business owners and working professionals on asking better questions of the data you see at work and in everyday life. No technical experience required.
Teaching Philosophy
Students learn best when they actively construct knowledge through experiences that combine multimodal resources with the chance to apply that knowledge to a real situation. Because most of my learners choose to participate, I design for intrinsic motivation and self-regulated learning. My training in human resource development and in the Cognitive Science of Teaching & Learning shapes how I do it.
Facilitator & Co-Investigator
I co-construct knowledge with learners rather than transmit fixed answers, treating their questions, experiences, and instincts as legitimate intellectual resources.
Structured Experiential Learning
I have supervised more than 150 student interns and employees through hands-on projects tied to real institutional needs, weekly training on research methods and professional skills, and reflective deliverables such as written reports, process reflections, and public-facing content. When learners design for a real audience, the stakes change, and that accountability supports learning that transfers.
Multimodal & Accessible Delivery
My webinars, self-paced modules, and podcast episodes combine video, narrative text, embedded visualizations, quizzes, and interactive elements. As my unit's IT Accessibility Liaison, I build materials to meet and exceed WCAG standards, and I treat accessibility as an equity question: whose voice a system was built to carry, and whose it excludes.
AI as Tool and Ethical Problem
I teach generative AI as both a tool and a subject of critical inquiry: whose disclosure it invites, what it does to trust, and what consent means when the one asking questions is not human. I also sequence it deliberately, so learners build foundational skills before AI enters the work and the tool extends capability rather than replacing thinking.
Aligned, Formative, Hard to Shortcut
Low-stakes quizzes, peer feedback, drafts, stakeholder presentations, and reflection track metacognitive growth alongside content mastery. Because AI can produce a polished artifact with little learner effort, I also assess process documentation, oral defense of design decisions, and in-person critique.
Teaching Informed by Evidence
My research on visualizations, engagement, and self-regulated learning shapes how I sequence content, pair visuals with narration, and ask learners to explain what they see.
Ready to Teach
Courses where my research and practice meet.
User Experience Research
Needs assessment and years of user research for educational program improvement.
Information Visualization
Design work plus research on how visualizations support engagement and learning with complex information.
Human-Centered Design
Empathetic, iterative design with accessibility as a core principle.
Mixed-Methods & AI-Facilitated Qualitative Research
Graduate methods drawing directly on my dissertation methodology.
AI & Communication Technology
Conversational agents, AI-mediated communication, and the ethics of disclosure and consent.
Consumer & Financial Literacy
Persuasion, deceptive design, and financial decision-making for general audiences.