Alison Mann

Biography

Dr. Alison Mann completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE. Her research looks at how restructuring pedagogical practices to promote communication and collaboration in increasingly diverse global online learning environments may improve student engagement and meaningful cross-cultural interactions.

Alison’s professional background includes over 20 years of teaching with a focus on film and media education, in face to face, blended and fully online classrooms. As a strong advocate for critical media literacy and civic engagement, Alison strives to empower students to produce media themselves in order to be active participants in a democratic society. She has also pursued her own film productions, most recently as co-producer in a series of documentary films on three influential feminist educators and thinkers. The first documentary has been completed: ​On Being Maxine Greene​ (2018).

Currently, Alison is working with the Pepper Group to explore how instructor pedagogy influences instructor generated videos in online graduate level teacher education courses. Further to this, the research group is interested in understanding how humanizing the online curriculum through instructor video (social presence) may be a means to increase engagement, motivation and interaction among students.