eLearning Team Leader and Apple Distinguished Educator, Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland

“Nothing is more important to me than ensuring that learning is authentic.”

James is a creative, innovative and engaging teacher at the international forefront of designing and implementing mobile learning pedagogies.  He is a highly reflective practitioner with a strong learner-centred philosophy and practice.  Students value how he uses technology to support authentic and engaging learning and assessment in an experiential learning paradigm. One writes, “Very realistic. I thought it was a real company.”

His authentic learning experiences extend to particularly effective collaborative learning. A student writes, “I was surprised how good that was, collaborating with other students helped me learn and how to embed those ideas and patterns into my memory”. James’ innovations are well received by students and colleagues. Of his iBooks innovation, a student comments that it is “revolutionising our learning experience”.  A colleague comments on his Shades of Grey ethics game: “It gave me insights to how effective these types of tools are to foster student-centred learning”.

James is widely recognised for his leadership with mobile technologies. In 2015 James was the only New Zealand tertiary teacher to be selected as an Apple Distinguished Educator.  He is generous in sharing his pedagogies and ideas with other academics, including through his many publications.