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Teaching

I teach students how real systems are designed, negotiated, governed, and deployed, not how they look in textbooks.

My courses are built around a simple premise: most failures in digital transformation do not come from weak technology, but from poor design decisions made early, under uncertainty, without a clear understanding of downstream consequences. Students learn to work inside that reality.

How My Teaching Works

My classes are structured around live, open-ended problems rather than pre-packaged cases. Students engage with ambiguity, incomplete information, and competing stakeholder interests, the same conditions they will face in professional practice.

Key elements of my approach:

  • Live industry projects
    Students work on real challenges drawn from my advisory and systems design engagements. These are not hypothetical scenarios. They involve actual business requirements, real constraints, and real tradeoffs.

  • System design, not tool usage
    The focus is on problem framing, requirements analysis, governance choices, and architectural decisions, rather than on any single platform or technology.

  • Stakeholder and power awareness
    Students learn how authority, incentives, and institutional context shape what systems can and cannot do, often more than technical capability.

  • Structured uncertainty
    Rather than eliminating uncertainty, courses are designed to expose it and teach students how to reason, justify decisions, and revise interpretations as conditions evolve.

  • Professional accountability
    Students present their work to executives, domain experts, or external partners when appropriate, learning how to defend design choices under real scrutiny.

What Students Learn to Do

By the end of my courses, students are able to:

  • Frame ill-defined problems in organizational and technical terms

  • Translate business needs into coherent system designs

  • Anticipate downstream consequences of data and architectural decisions

  • Navigate stakeholder disagreement and asymmetric power

  • Design systems that can scale without collapsing governance

  • Communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical audiences

Alumni regularly report that this preparation distinguishes them from peers in traditional programs. Several have gone on to launch startups, take on technical leadership roles, or advance quickly in analytics, consulting, and product organizations.

Courses

The courses below are the vehicles through which this approach is delivered.

Bentley University

  • Business Systems Analysis and Modeling

  • Programming Fundamentals (Java)

  • Introduction to Data and Information Management

Previous Institutions

  • Business Data Analytics, University of British Columbia

  • Introduction to Management Information Systems, University of British Columbia

  • Information Systems, Memorial University

  • Data Structures and Algorithms, Tai Solarin University

  • Object-Oriented Programming, Tai Solarin University

Beyond the Classroom

Teaching for me is not separate from research or practice. My research informs classroom work, while advisory work ensures that what students learn reflects how systems are actually built and governed today.

Many student projects evolve into internships, independent studies, research collaborations, or professional opportunities. This continuity is intentional. The goal is not simply to teach content, but to develop judgment.