Professional reflection gives faculty a moment to pause and look back, assess their progress over a timeframe. The timing for this reflection left some areas noticeably bare while others are overflowing, my reflection demonstrates a current imbalance in my teaching practice, and through this reflection my goal is to determine a strategy going forward with better balance. A large part of this timeframe being reflected on relates to issues around covid, whether directly or indirectly, and while there have been lessons learned many initiatives are still unfolding.

Writing about research, service to Sheridan and Professional Accomplishments was particularly difficult. My emphasis over this timeframe has solidly shifted to curriculum, which could be interpreted as not emphasizing research enough. However, developing content and creating tutorial videos for the courses I lead pushes far above my SWF hours every week so research hasn’t really been an option for me. I can’t afford to even daydream about my research interests until there is enough support for me to slow down and I can a invest the appropriate time to develop ideas into applications for grants to see them materialize.

I see the most potential for growth in these same three areas and look forward to a time when I can be of more service to Sheridan, and invest time pursuing my academic and professional research interests.

I'm Steve Hudak, a full-time professor in the Bachelor of Interaction Design Program at Sheridan College.

I have had many opportunities to try different teaching styles and pedagogical methods over a 32 year career. At twenty, teaching was still just a job that my continuing education students seemed to enroll into as a diversion, so I taught it like a gunslinger, young and skilled in the subject, performing in front of a crowd. Over these first few years I learned how to analyze a subject, deconstruct it, and demonstrate it. But looking back the real lesson was that teaching was fun, and playful, and built connection, and this has been something more difficult to maintain over the years than I would like to admit. Play always seems to be my goal but it takes a lot more work to get there.

In my thirties I took myself and my teaching more seriously but lacked the accreditation to continue at Sheridan. The road less travelled held fewer teaching opportunities and as they dried up I added many professional and creative titles to my resume. In my forties I was finally able to see a way back, and that the path I was on could divert, perhaps leading me closer to centering my teaching practice, and this led to the most profound life-altering moment I have experienced in a classroom; it was as a student.

During my MA, one beautiful fall day my professor asked us all to answer a simple question: what was a good life? When it was my turn I gave some glib answer, not prepared to be that vulnerable in front of my peers. But inside I had started to panic, unable to connect my current struggle with a good life. Even sitting there as one of 20 privileged creative grad students hand picked to be in this specialized program I could not connect with the idea. Maybe fulfilling, but not good, I was not comfortable enough with my privilege to see it all as good. It felt more like a dream that would be taken away once I woke up, I was still fighting to get to good.

And over the next two years I was just as unable to resolve this question, and still angry that my prof had ever asked it, and that it still held so much power over me. I now know that this was when I learned how rare the opportunity I had been given to teach at twenty years old really was, and that squandering it on the path I had chosen did not get me any closer to a good life.

I have no regrets, my inner conflict now resolved; I get to do the thing I love and am best at, I have a great life and this revelation has shaped and redefined my teaching practice.

Now in my fifties, my goal is to help my students find their path, and to help them discover their agency to shape it, they all deserve to find their best life and my hope is to be a small part of their journey. I support them through embracing their unique perspectives in an inclusive, accessible space, and respecting their diversity. My classroom is a safe place where students can try new things, express their creativity and diversity, and be celebrated for it.

I have chosen not to focus on the formal Student Course Evaluations for this reflection. My evaluations are consistently good overall, however the feedback is rarely constructive, and has never created clear actionable items or directly shaped curriculum. Even as a good instructor who works hard at creating an inclusive positive classroom the surveys have been the single most negative motivator I have faced at Sheridan. So, while I understand these surveys are a metric, in my experience they do not reflect my classroom or my teaching.

I have two examples describing how different and positive my own approach to gathering, reflecting, and acting on student feedback is, because I am deeply invested in shaping and improving curriculum based on student feedback.

During the terms of Fall 2022 and Winter 2023 I made specific and strategic efforts to get actionable course feedback by making space in the class and asked direct questions to my class about the curriculum. Before key classes I had prepared two sets of questions for my students, one was pertaining directly to improving curriculum and the other was discussing the land acknowledgement content I had built into our class time, these are reflections on both processes:

1. Context: The return to on-campus classes was a challenging process. We had pivoted to virtual classrooms just as our new program map was rolling out, remote teaching definitely affected the momentum of rolling out new curriculum that hadn’t been tested especially with new courses built for in-person teaching. As the Covid years went by and remote curriculum continued to adapt it was an opportunity to build on what was working and create the best virtual classroom experience possible. And like everyone there was encouragement to keep some of these lessons learned, on the return to campus my goal was to test how these virtual lessons could be integrated into our new program curriculum in the classroom and serve our students going forward. For added pressure I was taking on a new course lead role that supported multiple part-time professors, so had to adapt curriculum efficiently with multiple stakeholders.

Reflection: I recognized that I needed direct, critical, and timely feedback; it was in response to all of these variables that I included my students and asked for a direct and frank critique of the course, the curriculum, and the way it they had experienced it in-person. I asked specific, fundamental, and actionable questions, took notes, and listened. It was of utmost importance that my students felt safe and knew they could be honest, so I stood back and gave them an open forum to help shape the future of the course; and their feedback was incredibly constructive. Their assessment - along with that of my Part-Time colleagues - helped give me the multiple channels of layered feedback I required to reshape the curriculum course. The current iteration of course is now far superior and reaching the quality of teaching and learning we had originally planned with our new program map. This process was only possible through being open and strategic about student feedback directly shaping and improving curriculum.

2. Context: I have been determined to be an ally to the First Nations communities in Ontario and am proud of the work Sheridan is doing to be a part of this, as a white male professor there is an importance to elevate non-colonial voices and to not re-interpret their struggle. I have used the classroom to contextualize the importance of land acknowledgement by sensitively, carefully, and conscientiously adding content that supports understanding of the underlying and systemic issues, providing enough information and context for students to choose for themselves how to be a part of the spirit of reconciliation.

Reflection: Starting in Fall 2022 I introduced short videos along with reading the land acknowledgement at the beginning of every class, the voices of first nations issues and stories setting the tone. While being suitable for the classroom sometimes the video content was emotionally charged, dealing with hardship and years of suffering, and was difficult to absorb. One specific class I chose to play the video before the land acknowledgement to see how it affected reading the land acknowledgement. The added affect of the context was so poignant that it almost brought me to tears as I read it, when this happened I knew I needed to get student feedback to confirm if this added content was helping them understand the issues. Many students had difficulty explaining their feelings toward the subject but those who spoke up felt it was a big leap for many of them to understand the issues even with the additional videos. I continued to survey all my classes over a two-week period and found the same responses in each; the few students who already understood the historical context of land acknowledgement greatly appreciated the added content – though it was difficult sometimes. However, the overwhelming response was that most still didn’t understand the issues that shaped land acknowledgement, many being international students with less Canadian history to draw from.

This has led to a renewed focus for my classes in adding First Nations content that focuses on and explains the history and underlying issues. My research found some of the best content is designed for Ontario high school students or people new to Canada. I have located foundational and supportive stories explaining the underlying issues and added these in alternating weeks over the fall term deliberately to not overwhelm, overload, or oversaturate. Other recommendations were to add a Teams channel in the course where students can find more content when they are ready to take on greater depth issues at their own pace. I rolled these changes out in the Fall term of 2023 and am planning to survey my classroom again and keep making further improvements.

Further building on this initiative I have been paired with a faculty colleague who has used a different strategy to build awareness and respect in the classroom for First Nations communities by directly shaping curriculum that reinforces and highlights First Nations culture and practices. We will be documenting our findings and comparing notes to further improve our methods in the spring term of 2024.

These two examples clearly demonstrate how I effectively and strategically use student evaluations to impact my course content. I am committed to continue to use this method of student surveys and feedback to positively shape curriculum. I will continue to add the links and make time for students to participate in the Students Surveys in my courses so Sheridan can gain the necessary metrics. However, as these examples demonstrate the formative feedback that has most meaningfully shaped and will continue to impact my future curriculum will be from the proven method of providing an open forum, asking direct questions, being open to constructive criticism, reflecting on feedback, and strategically acting on it.

I am part of a great team, and the past several years have allowed me the opportunity to build, improve, and design new courses, develop, and redevelop curriculum, and work collaboratively with students and colleagues.

I have been able to work on multidisciplinary projects, apply for research finding and awarded grants. Many research initiatives were greatly affected by remote teaching and so my energy has shifted to respond to that focus, building foundational and advanced tutorials and curriculum that supports both students and Part-Time professors, allowing us to deliver consistent quality curriculum for both remote and in person class teaching. As we continue to improve our newer program curriculum and have lost more professors than have gained since remote teaching my focus has not been able to shift, and much of my research efforts go into developing solutions and video tutorials. I am anxious to investing time into my research interests again as soon as possible, currently all of my energy is focused in deep curriculum development and support. Working with cutting edge technologies is a great part of our program, exciting new tech also means things consistent change and updates. A large part of the research work I do regularly is testing, developing and adapting to changes to technology during the term. Tutorial videos often needing to be built one week before rolling out due to software updates or advances in technology.

These broad examples point to a dynamic curriculum that is time and resource intensive. So while my time is less focused on my own research interests my professional development has been intensely focused toward testing technology, building tutorials, and developing curriculum. There are four direct examples of professional development activities I would like to highlight:

Being committed to improving course curriculum is an iterative and collaborative process. For courses and programs to improve it is imperative that all voices are respected and heard, I had been added to the process of curriculum design leading up to start of full-time teaching in the program.

Being able to see and be included in the bigger picture of the program map broadens one’s perspective, it is easy to get narrow-focused with the intricacies of individual course curriculum and keeping this larger picture in sight has informed my understanding of the program at a wholistic level. This first experience has been continuously reinforced as courses have been designed, critically examined, and re-designed.

The list of courses I have developed full curriculum for is growing but the larger picture includes maintenance and management of curriculum, rarely in our program does content stay the same year over year. Our norm is more than simply updating the dates and calendars. We redevelop and redeploy some new content in every course and sometimes entirely redeveloped curriculum each term as well as the current course work we are supporting.

The most recent example of a this would be the design and redesign of our 2nd year course DESN 27425 Modeling and Materials, which had been designed as a new 6hr course rolling out of the new program map while under the strain of covid and the influence of pivoting to a virtual classroom.

This course design was significant due to several factors:

1. It was designed to merge curriculum and the learning outcomes from two separate courses from our old program map.

2. It was the first implementation of 6 hour classes in the new 2nd year map.

3. Due to uneasy faculty collaboration with the course lead who had not created adequate course content I took on the added role of fully supporting our part-time faculty and developed additional content week by week.

4. Covid restrictions sent us home the previous winter and our spring was spent adapting curriculum to remote teaching, so we were rolling out a new Fall course having never taught it before for a course that was merging two never before merged courses.

Without going into details there was difficulty with a colleague initially tasked with developing this course and their ability to support part time faculty led to my added role of developing support material. This led to discrepancies with what curriculum was rolled out to students between separate course sections but succeeded in building what the course would eventually become. Developing included developing content for two modules:

1. Lectures and slide decks

2. Weekly activities and activity documents

3. Website templates

4. Grading rubrics

5. Project briefs

6. Video tutorials.

I had written the framework for the new course outline, and being the only faculty to have previously taught both old-map courses being merged into this new course gave me a unique insight into the direction and best practices necessary to connect the learning outcomes to building successful curriculum. And the overall outcome was that I successfully managed the situation, bridging the difficulties with my colleague through the term, while fully supporting our part time faculty and rolling out a new course during the pandemic.

Developing content including full video tutorials two weeks prior to rolling out throughout the term required a solid plan. The curriculum plan was crucial and kept Part Time faculty informed and integrated into the rpoocess. From this plan I was able to consistently keep the highest standard for quality course materials, reflecting the learning outcomes and responding to all of the external variables while supporting all faculty and meeting stakeholder objectives. After being deployed virtually successfully for fall 2021 I was able to update the curriculum for in-person teaching fall 2022. As course lead I only made adjustment to update and include campus-specific content but decided that testing it as it was previously designed was necessary to help determine how best to fully adapt going forward. Deploying the same curriculum twice under such different circumstances is what helped shape the need to include students in the conversation. And as previously described it was deploying this curriculum the second time and getting student feedback that helped shape it going forward and into what it is today.

I have subsequently modelled this success over the past three years into redeveloping other courses in our programing including the entire curriculum for DESN 22848 Media, Motion and the Body, as well as VDES 3444 Interactive Narrative This spring I will be redeveloping DESN 30146 Physical Computing in its entirety, success building on success.

Interdisciplinary projects are by far the most interesting and rewarding parts of teaching at Sheridan, I would like to push this part of my work further. I have had the opportunity to work collaboratively with the Illustration Program, being paired with Ted Zourntos to explore researching, developing, and creating a physical interactive mural for the Sheridan Trafalgar campus.

Ted and I led a small group of talented students in an intensive 10-day narrative workshop / design research project allowing a select group of students from both programs to work together and explore what was possible. The narrative workshop was used as a focused ideation process and set a theme. A material exploration resulted in an advanced conductive paint with enhanced characteristics. Cross-disciplinary collaboration resulted in dynamic, robust prototypes.

Our final deliverable included a full presentation of our findings, explorations, methodologies, and prototypes to multiple stakeholders. The project succeeded in its goal of exploring the academic potential of cross-disciplinary projects. Its success can be indirectly measured by the interest it has created for further cross-disciplinary research and directly by the interest it has created in developing a physical mural using the results of our prototypes.

Ted and I moved forward on this success and applied for and were awarded a $10,000 SRCA Research grant to complete the mural project. I took the lead role in the application because much of the technology being considered was my specialization, but we worked closely as an equal team.

Once the funding was confirmed we started the process of posting jobs for our students to work through the summer of 2020, however, obvious in retrospect the timing worked against us. As we went into lockdown no one was sure when we would be coming back to campus so we maintained the job posting, interviewed students, and even selected candidates to hire. But we couldn’t commit and once in full lockdown being restricted from campus access, we had to let students know we couldn’t more ahead and put the project on hold. We kept periodic updates and considered ways to adapt the research to a remote frame or workflow but the physicality of the research left us no choice and over the course of the pandemic had to officially inform SRCA we were cancelling the project. Due to the timing of accepting the grant and going into lockdown we hadn’t accepted any grant funds so it was just an email and final discussion with our AD.

Post-covid the interest to pick up the project and go forward hasn’t materialized, however I am glad to have gone through the entire research application process, having plenty of research ideas, and am very prepared to write further grants and take on future interdisciplinary projects. The original research developed in the design workshop that led to the mural project has also contributed greatly to our program, the conductive paint has been integrated into our physical computing curriculum and both it the augmented reality components have become fully included in project work.

There have been many areas over the past several years where I used new teaching, learning, and assessing methods, I will focus on the two most recent success.

1. Context: Design iteration is definitely difficult, coming up with good ideas is taxing, and our students have always resisted increasing iteration beyond the bare minimum. They are asked in every course repeatedly to come up with new ideas and push beyond their first few. I have had many discussions with colleagues from our program and beyond looking for ways to solve the iteration dilemma and introduce methods that can encourage more diverse results.

Reflection: I will just focus on reflecting on the specific new method that has made the most change. It was developed from brainstorming session with another FT faculty who introduced the concept of ‘Formstorming’ from an article they had read about. Formstoming is a type of ideating / documentation that uses images or 'forms' that are curated and assembling into a grid. The process uses a constraint for these images tying them to a theme or a set of timed research. The result is a final grid of 'forms' and so ‘Formstorming is introduced into the classroom as both a verb and a noun. This iterative constraint focuses on process and low-risk taking - their exploration of activities are indirect and exploratory, not just early ideas for a final work. Students are required to submit formstorming documentation as design research weekly on their student websites.

The repetition of this process through the term reinforces the underlying principle of design resdearch and iteration without the same negative resistance to iteration. Their website serves to demonstrate all the research they have done through a module and revealing patterns and showcasing process over a single product.

But equally important is that the grading is weighted to reward formstoming, away from being graded for a single final design. The Formstorming process rewards iteration while de-emphasizing a single final work and thus reinforces process, good design principles, and completely eliminates final project work being done the night before it's due. With some small adjustments and improvements over three years of implementation the results have been incredibly successful and rewarding.

2. Context: I have tried many methods of enhancing or making presentations more meaningful for my students but nothing has changed very much. Students standing at the podium showing their slide deck and getting feedback has been the main method, however most feedback comes from me and the process rarely leads to interesting student discussions. This is a draining time-consuming process and rarely leads to students acting on or getting good student feedback. In their 2020 paper ‘Designing Interactive Scaffolds to Encourage Reflection on Peer Feedback’ , Cook, Dow, and Hammer define the issue “Feedback is a key element of project-based learning, but only if students reflect on and learn from the feedback they receive. Students often struggle to deeply engage with feedback, whether due to lack of confidence, time, or skill” 1.

Reflection: This term I tried a new method that focuses on peer feedback reflections. Cook, Dow, & Hammer use the following 5 assessed student reflection/feedback goals as “Sensemaking, Iteration, Prioritization, Team Building, and Efficiency”. Each of these goals has been enhanced through implementing this peer feedback reflective process. I provide the class with a prompt guide for both giving and receiving good feedback, during the presentation process students form small clustered groups and present their project-based work to each other, students can see and hear other groups as they work together and present their work. Their is a palpable and positive energy in the room throughout. Students are encouraged to document their feedback, reflect, and either write a short focused reflection or record a short video reflection based on the feedback they got. The results in two modules over three sections has been incredibly successful, with a far enhanced quality of reflection and actionable responses. Students have taken responsibility for their ideas and engaged with each other at a level higher than I have seen in my decade of teaching in IxD and made the effort to tell me how much they like the new process and have gained a new interest in reflection and presenting.

During the 1st full winter term of the lockdown we had no end in sight and I committed myself to one of my favorite cohorts that I would creating a software guide for them. I had underestimated the amount of work this would be and wanting to keep my commitment continued to the end. It turned into 9 guides and a total of 850 pages.

Context: I had wanted to teach Interactive Narrative even before being hired as full-time faculty, from the outset it looked like a great course and I wanted to use it as a platform to explore some difficult, time-consuming software. This course is built as way to explore and integrate a variety of media tools to create a single intertwined narrative. This is group-based project is built in a series of stages through the entire term and encourages working with interesting software and technology. The course had always been taught by part time faculty and when I heard it was in need of updating I jumped in and enthusiastically took on the lead role. In the Winter term of 2020 I dug-in, added some new features, updated some curriculum, but as we all know we went home during reading week, developed strategies to pivot to remote teaching and spent the rest of the winter in remote classrooms. I helped students transition their narratives relying on physical spaces or direct- contact concepts to digital deliverables and hoped that by the following winter we would be back on campus. Interactive Narrative is a course that is greatly enhanced by using the campus to physically test ideas, and much of the technology we introduce is only available on campus. Fast forward to the winter of 2021 and we were deep into the pandemic and still a long way from being back on campus. I was teaching two sections of Interactive Narrative, we had shifted to Zoom, breakout-rooms were allowing us to create better virtual classrooms, but with so much still unavailable to them I wanted this course to enhance the remote-classroom experience. I had been hyping-up this course the previous term to improve student spirits and I mentioned I was planning on taking a dive into developing some Unity tutorials for them.

Reflection: Unity is a large mysterious piece of software, though used primarily as a game design tool it can be used for creating truly epic interactive narratives. The current Unity tutorials we had been using were getting dated and there was plenty of room for improvement. I began systematically going through online tutorials, building code, and developing assets. I started with the basics and began rolling out pdf guides for my students each week. The issue I faced as these weekly updates continued is that building a Unity project is actually building one massive integrated guide, so all of the individual weekly guides needed to fully integrate and be tested before the next tutorial could be completed. I could not have completed this if not for virtual classroom teaching, and the effort was far more resource intensive than I had expected it would be when I started. But I persevered and my commitment to my students to build this tool culminated in 9 guides and included almost 900 pages of content.

As the lead faculty for the course I now provide the full set of guides to all sections of this course and encourage part-time faculty them to share them with their students. By my estimation over the past three years these Unity guides have supported over 270 students as they explore and learn to use this powerful media narrative tool - which also supports enhancing their design tool-kit and portfolios.

I am still planning to schedule a classroom observation with a colleague or administrator.

I look forward to being able to focus more on my research interests in the coming years, I have a varied practice and have many areas of research and colleagues I want to work with to develop research projects. My last professional exhibition was before the pandemic and I had developed a body of work for further exhibitions, as well as creative and technical directions I wish to explore. However there are many areas of research I can draw from as reflection examples for this document.

In this reflective document I will refer to three research focused projects: 1. My 2019 solo generative art exhibition. 2. the Interdisciplinary Mural Project between IxD and Illustration. 3. The 9 Unity Tutorial guides I created for Interactive Narrative.

1. In July of 2019I had a solo exhibition at the Agnes Jamieson Gallery titled “Pattern/Process/Procedure //exploring the computational sublime”. The exhibition was 4 separate generative art visualizations exploring the connections between algorithm and abstract expressionism. This is the formal description from the exhibition:

A series of four computational works that explore procedural systems through time-based media. This six-year exploration has been conducted as a series of action-research exercises in technologies used to create digital artwork. The exploration has played with patterns that are visually reminiscent of American Abstract Expressionism and the philosophies being expressed during that period. This visual theme has informed the series of works on exhibit that loosely resemble historical abstract painting styles, however, in following with their generative tradition these works evolve and transition. The randomizing of their repetitious procedural algorithms reveals deeper patterns that encourages quiet contemplation of the nature of abstraction. They are meant to be meditative, and this outcome has become the heart of the work.

2. 2. In 2019 -2020 I was part of an interdisciplinary research project with Ted Zourntos bringing IxD students and Illustration students together to develop some concepts, themes, and practices for an interactive mural. From an intensive 10 day design charrette our collaboration generated enough support, insight and interest to develop a SRCA research application to fully develop the project and create the Mural. This is the formal description from the application:

The Visions 2020 Interactive Mural is a collaborative research project rooted in the theory of critical making1. The project brings together Interaction Design and Illustration students and faculty to create innovative interactive mural prototypes. The project aims to pollinate concepts at the intersection of art, design, technology, and storytelling. Through the exchange of knowledge and expertise within the cutting edge field of interactive mural design, this project leverages the potential in experiential storytelling within public space by layering various combinations of interactive technologies and narrative concepts. The three unique interactive mural prototypes will be installed on the south wall of the B-wing corridor and preliminary testing and research will initiate future collaborative projects within Sheridan.A series of four computational works that explore procedural systems through time-based media. This six-year exploration has been conducted as a series of action-research exercises in technologies used to create digital artwork. The exploration has played with patterns that are visually reminiscent of American Abstract Expressionism and the philosophies being expressed during that period. This visual theme has informed the series of works on exhibit that loosely resemble historical abstract painting styles, however, in following with their generative tradition these works evolve and transition. The randomizing of their repetitious procedural algorithms reveals deeper patterns that encourages quiet contemplation of the nature of abstraction. They are meant to be meditative, and this outcome has become the heart of the work.

3. 3. The Unity Guides I created as the lead faculty for Interactive Narrative are a testament to the level of development I am capable of within a term. While I have created many tutorials abd guides over my time at Sheridan these stand apart as a massive undertaking and represent a milestone for me professionally. Before creating these guides the software environment Unity was a mystery to me, I entered into this research to learn how to use and then then to teach the software as a narrative tool. While I didn’t realize when I started how large this undertaking would be I had dedicated my time to focus on resolving it as a major curriculum resource. The completion of the guides has given me both confidence and insight into where I would focus next, I have been considering options and following advances in several key areas of technology preparing for my next exploration.

I am proud of the work I have done for Sheridan, on the surface I have taken a step back from summative support in terms of shifting my focus solely on 2nd and 3rd year courses. And while I sincerely miss being a part of the capstone classes and helping prepare our students for graduation I am so deeply embedded and invested in developing and redesigning our new map curriculum, post-covid I can't imagine not finsihing this important work.

As I consider the next three years of my academic career, I would like to have more time available to focus on my own professional development research to see more professional opportunties for growth, research and service.

Since finishing CTL I have had many accomplishments, however, I consider some accomplishments more important than others. Three accomplishments that stand out are:

1. Developing Formstorming as a tool and methodology for weekly iteration in the classroom.

2. Developing the Unity Guides, Narrative Workshop, Skills Assessment, and AI Group Member for Interactive Narrative

3. Peer Reflection Presentations, this game-changing methodology has turned presenting into a rewarding, edifying, and constructive component.

Currently my focus is in developing the future of physical computing in our program, with entirely new directions being proposed that will reshape the way we teach this technology, it’s an exciting time in our program but I hope to open up my time and be able to contribute on ways beyond our program.

Originally when I was hired there was discussion about being cross-appointed to XD, however circumstances have led to committing my time to IxD. I have been working in IxD for several years developing curriculum and supporting the program, however IxD is in the stages of changing the emphasis of Physical Computing away from the physical aspects allowing our students to focus on digital content and interaction. This is an important shift for our program however when this happens my skill set also shifts away from IxD and redirects toward XD- which is squarely where my practice has always focused.

This push to develop our Physical Computing course to be IxD focused and move away from the physical circuit based interaction modalities is also an opportunity to redevelop the curriculum as an interdisciplinary course with XD. Our two programs have been considering where a good fit may be as a collaboration, and without a doubt this is the best option. I propose starting this process especially since my special experience lies in this juncture between our two design programs.

Subsequently over the next three years as we work toward shifting Physical Computing in IxD to a more IxD focus I would like to see my course load equally shift toward XD wherever end whenever possible. While I am committed to IxD. and my colleagues are incredible, and I have nothing but admirations and respect for them; I am starting to feel like a fish out of water as we rightfully shift further and further away from our overlaps with experiential design. My research interests are all connected and aligned to XD centered design so, yy creative practice is as an installation artist and has focused on the language of experiential design, over the next three years I need to start alligning my pedagogy with the design language I am most fluent and familiar in if I am to be of the most positive use to Sheridan and find the most fulfillment as a professor.