About

The development of these modules was led by Dr. Todd Cherner from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and he is the Director of the Master of Arts in Educational Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship program at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He is also the co-founder of App Ed Review, a startup venture that features free reviews of apps, websites, and digital tools teachers can use in their classrooms. Cherner has authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications on a variety of educational subjects, with a specific emphasis on digital literacy and educational technology. He also has coordinated multiple graduate-level programs that are online, face-to-face, and hybrid. Cherner’s educational philosophy is rooted in the belief that students should develop the literacy, interpersonal, and critical thinking skills needed for informed citizenry, and he sees educational technologies as being tools for promoting the development of those skills.

In addition, these modules were used as part of a workshop at the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Educators in 2020. The focus of that workshop was to demonstrate ways of blending technologies to engage students in academic topic that are not limited to being part of a learning management system.

Previous to that workshop, these modules were first piloted with students in the fall of 2020 to teach Design Thinking, and that pilot was very successful. The modules allowed students to engage the different stages of Design Thinking and then they were able to critique the modules. This tactic allowed the students an opportunity to be co-creators of the modules, and improvements were made based on their feedback.