Why I Choose to Work at Academic Innovation

I chose to work at Academic Innovation because I am passionate about the mission of public higher education, and I am excited about the new learning opportunities available through emerging media and technology. Additionally, I enjoy working with a team of collaborative, altruistic, and passionate people.

Current Roles/Previous Experience

As Learning Experience Designer (LXD) and Graduate Certificate Coordinator, Jacob works collaboratively with the LXD team and the LXD certificate program to design, develop, and implement innovative learning experiences at CAI. Jacob is passionate about the value student perspective can bring, and is always striving to support students as they undertake design projects at CAI.

Prior to his current role, Jacob was an LXD student fellow and a music instructor. As an LXD fellow, Jacob worked with faculty and CAI staff to design and develop Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and MasterTrack courses. As a music instructor, Jacob developed curriculum in K-12, non-profit, and informal learning settings.

While earning his undergraduate and graduate degrees in education, Jacob’s academic and personal interests centered on the relationships between power, community, and identity in learning. These interests motivated his studies into critical pedagogy and post-structuralism. Jacob’s most recent scholarly interests have centered on the learning sciences, particularly situative, sociocultural, and critical perspectives that conceptualize meaning making as a process of renegotiation and reproduction. These theoretical considerations undergird Jacob’s design practices, particularly as he seeks to design learning environments that are socially just and equitable.

Ask Me to Learn About

The LXD Student Residency Program; Critical Pedagogy; Music; Running

Publications:

Quintana, R.M., Fortman, J., & DeVaney, J. (2021). Advancing an approach of resilient design
for learning by designing for extensibility, flexibility, and redundancy. In C. Gonzalez, T. Thurston, and K. Lundstrom (Eds.), Resilient Pedagogy: Practical Teaching Strategies to Overcome Distance, Disruption, and Distraction (pp. 77-92). Utah State University. https://dx.doi.org/10.26079/a516-fb24

Quintana, R. M., & Fortman, J. (2020). Exploring the experience of students who take on
alternative viewpoints within a role-based simulation. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conferences of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) (pp. 286–293).

Quintana, R.M., Quintana, C., Fortman, J., Gerber, E. (2020). ViewPoint: Student experiences
with technology supporting role-based educational simulations. In Proceedings of Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). (pp. 1 – 7). Apr. 24 – Apr. 30. Honolulu, HI.

Chandler, C., Kessler, A., Fortman. J. (2020). Language Matters: Exploring the Use of
Figurative Language at ICICLE 2019. In Proceedings of the 2019 Conference on Learning Engineering. (pp. 16 – 26). May 20 – May 23. Washington D.C.