Since joining the Faculty of Information in 2016, Professor Olivier St-Cyr has undertaken several initiatives to enhance and support student learning. He created the UXD Concentration curriculum in the Master of Information (MI) professional degree. Using a consultative approach rooted in iterative design, Professor St-Cyr built a curriculum that bridges UXD theory and practice and is informed by industry approaches. Industry-informed teaching has always been a central part of Professor St-Cyr’s pedagogy. Having spent eight years in industry before transitioning to academia, Professor St-Cyr has developed innovative practices that bring industry relevance to student learning. To support his teaching, Professor St-Cyr designed and oversaw the construction of two cutting-edge active learning spaces in the Bissell Building (which houses the Faculty of Information). The spaces are Professor St-Cyr’s teaching research labs, acting as exploratory sandboxes. These spaces have transformed teaching and learning at the Faculty of Information.

Professor St-Cyr is committed to student learning and pedagogical engagement through his innovative classroom practices which emphasize hands-on active learning, project-based learning, and studio-based pedagogy. In his UXD capstone course, he has adopted a Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) framework in which students partner with grassroots community organizations across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to complete a major design project. Professor St-Cyr serves on a number of university-wide teaching advisory committees, is a member of the Education Advisory Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the co-founder of EduCHI, an international community of practice of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and UXD educators. He was the 2016/17 recipient of the Faculty of Information Master of Information Student Council (MISC) Outstanding Instructor Award.