Rebecca Quintana

Rebecca M. Quintana is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan (U-M) and a Clinical Associate Professor of Information—by courtesy—at the University of Michigan School of Information. She co-leads the Rackham Learning Experience Design Graduate Certificate and serves as faculty lead within the Designing for Innovation: Learning, Instruction, and Technology concentration within the Educational Studies MA degree. Quintana is also a governing faculty member within U-M’s Digital Studies Institute (DSI) and a member of the scholars network of the Phillip J. Bowman Center for Scholarship to Practice. 

Quintana’s scholarship emphasizes the application of the learning sciences to the design of technology-rich learning environments. Her work foregrounds emerging technologies that support the design of face-to-face and online environments, particularly tools that scaffold ideation and collaboration within learning experience design processes. She is especially interested in how such tools can augment learners’ capacity to engage in complex design work, including sense-making, decision-making, and reflection. Across this work, she advances equitable and inclusive approaches to the design and enactment of learning environments, with particular attention to technologies that support social interaction. She also examines the role of immersive learning environments as a complementary space for extending these design approaches. In her teaching, she integrates learning experience design core competencies, supporting students in developing principled, learner-centered approaches for diverse contexts. Her teaching has been recognized for innovation with an award from the DSI. 

Quintana is an active presenter at major educational 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 Chair for the Online Teaching and Learning SIG within AERA. Quintana’s research has been published in high-impact outlets such as Information and Learning Sciences, Tech Trends, and Online Learning Journal. 

Pronouns

she/her

Areas of interest

Educational technologies; Online learning and instruction; Generative AI as a design partner; Immersive learning environments

Honors & Awards

Research Fellow, National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education

Education

PhD, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
MA, Master of Arts in Education, University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
BFA, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Visual Arts, York University 
BEd, Bachelor of Education, York University