ES Learning Sciences Clinical Faculty Candidate Talk

Topic: Preparing Learning Experience Designers: A Pathway Toward Professional Readiness

Learning experience design is a rich, extensive field that integrates professional skills and disciplinary traditions across diverse learning settings. With interest and demand in the field growing, a learning sciences challenge is to blend authentic professional learning opportunities with foundational courses that prepare students for related career pathways. Quintana will discuss how she is addressing this challenge in the Rackham Learning Experience Design Graduate Certificate, which she co-developed and co-directs. The certificate integrates academic courses in Educational Studies with an immersive residency experience at the Center for Academic Innovation, creating practical directions for Marsal Family School of Education students and offering a response to workforce needs identified by employers. In this talk, Quintana will present a set of learning experience design core competencies that she authored to underpin the curriculum and residency components of the program, and to serve as a framework for students to reflect on their academic and professional development. Quintana will explore how each competency connects with her approach to pedagogy and is informed by her scholarship of practice and application. The session will conclude with a discussion of how Quintana is leading efforts to expand the reach of the program to a global audience through use of various learning platforms (e.g., Coursera, Michigan Online) and technologies (e.g., social learning applications, extended reality, and generative AI).

About Rebecca Quintana
Dr. Rebecca M. Quintana is the Director of Blended and Online Learning Design in the Center for Academic Innovation and instructor at the Marsal Family School of Education, University of Michigan. In these roles, she co-directs the Rackham Learning Experience Design Graduate Certificate. Quintana is also a faculty affiliate with the Digital Studies Institute and a member of the Diversity Scholars Network with the National Center for Institutional Diversity. Quintana’s scholarship emphasizes the application of learning sciences to the design of technology-rich learning environments, focusing on tools that enable social interaction and immersive learning. In her teaching, she advances equitable and inclusive approaches to instruction. She has received recognition for teaching innovation with an award from the Digital Studies Institute. Quintana is an active presenter at major research conferences, such as the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the International Conference of the Learning Sciences. She currently holds the elected position of Program Chair for the Online Teaching and Learning SIG within AERA. Quintana’s research has been published in outlets such as Information and Learning Sciences, Tech Trends, and Online Learning Journal.