Meet your 2025-2026 Digital Learning Mentors! This year’s Digital Learning Mentors (DLMs) have training, experience, and interest in a range of digital tools and teaching strategies, including student-centered course design; AI applications for teaching, research, and accessibility; strategies for teaching AI literacy; and culturally sustaining pedagogy, including bilingual course starter kits. TLi’s Learning Design Team is thrilled to partner with the DLMs to provide a network of peer-to-peer faculty support. Digital Learning Mentors are available for consults via email and/or Zoom.
You can reach out to a DLM to:
- Ask questions about teaching ideas, tools, or resources
- Talk through an idea and discuss steps to implement
- Discuss a challenge you’re facing
- Find support for adding a new tool or teaching practice to your courses
- Explore ways to engage with your students about AI use and information literacy
Below, each DLM has shared more about their interests and expertise. You’re welcome to reach out to any mentor whose expertise matches your question or area of interest.
Breeann Austin
Library
As an instruction librarian, I’m passionate about empowering students and faculty to strengthen their information literacy skills, which now increasingly includes AI literacy. My work focuses on how we can thoughtfully and critically use (and not use) AI tools to enhance lesson planning, research, and accessibility. Please reach out if you have any questions on how to use the AI tools in my toolkit. I can help you navigate a tool, evaluate the information they produce, and brainstorm/design lesson plans introducing these tools and general AI Literacy to your classes. AI is everywhere, and even people who don't want to use it, are probably engaging with it daily, which is why AI literacy is so important right now. Please let me know if I can help you explore AI and I look forward to learning something from you as well.
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Breeann's Toolkit
- Consensus
- ChatGPT
- Research Rabbit
- Library AI database features (Primo AI, Ebsco, ProQuest, Oxford, JSTOR)
- Semantic Scholar
- DALL-E 3
- Goblin Tools
- Adobe Express
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Connect with Breeann
Email: breeann.austin@csuci.edu
Microsoft Bookings - Breeann Austin
Kristen Linton
Health Science
Ask me about: integrating AI into teaching, research, and service. I have used AI to improve my teaching to be more engaging by creating AI patients for students to interact with. I have used it for data analysis and literature reviews. I have used it to synthesize meeting notes to recommend program learning outcomes too.
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Kristen's Toolkit
- GPT-4
- Playlab.ai
- Research Rabbit
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Connect with Kristen
Email: kristen.linton@csuci.edu
Danna Lomax
Education
I welcome the opportunity to collaborate with you! As a PK–16+ educator, I bring experience
in backward mapping, designing courses across disciplines, and utilizing Canvas. I’m
passionate about centering student voice, fostering courageous conversations, and
building community through reflective learning experiences such as Community Circles.
My interests also include peace education and culturally sustaining pedagogy. In TLi,
we’ve developed Bilingual Course Starter Kits that uplift Spanish as an asset at our
Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). If you’d like to integrate more Spanish into your
courses, I’d love to collaborate on ways to use these kits to support our Multilingual
Learners, as well. I’m here to be a thought partner and support as we explore ways
to better serve our students. ¡Adelante!
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Danna's Toolkit
- Canvas
- Bilingual Course Kits
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Connect with Danna
Email: danna.lomax@csuci.edu
Former Mentors
Benny Ng
Chemistry
As one of the AI-DLMs, I am happy to discuss and explore a wide range of AI-related
topics with my fellow faculty members. I am particularly interested in brainstorming
and using AI in all disciplines. The development of AI is so rapid that one can feel
suffocating and overwhelming. I am here to support you to play with different tools
in order to improve teaching and learning effectiveness as well as learning outcomes.
Finally, I am eager to learn from you about your experiences with AI.
Leslie Abell
Sociology
Dr. Abell joined the CI faculty in 2014 and regularly teaches core curriculum courses, such as Statistical Applications in the Social Sciences, Writing in the Social Sciences, and Sociology Capstone as well as electives, such as Crime and Society. In the Sociology Capstone course, she often engages students in Community Based Research with local community partners or partners on campus.
She has participated in a variety of professional development programs, including ISLAS, several Faculty Inquiry Projects (FIPs), THRIVE, and is a current participant in ACUE’s Effective Online Teaching Practices. Her research interests include family relationships and desistance, true crime, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Maria Ballesteros-Sola
MVS School of Business & Economics
Ask me about course backward design, flipped classroom, interactive sessions both
online & face to face, interactive activities in the classroom, case method teaching,
online experiential and service learning, affordable course materials & #OER, scaffolded
assignments. Please reach out and if I don’t know the answer to your question we will
figure it out and learn together.
Stacey Beauregard
English
I'm always happy to talk about: course and module organization (including scaffolding
and creating effective workflows), designing for multiple modes of engagement, peer
feedback, student-to-student interaction in asynchronous courses, and efficient individual
engagement with students. I'm also interested in creative approaches to online teaching,
and would be happy to be a sounding board for brainstorming creative assignment, assessment,
or design ideas.
Tom Clobes
Health Sciences
My teaching approach includes (1) individualized instruction, (2) innovation, and
(3) humanized elements, and a focus on diversity and inclusion to meet the needs of
a diverse student body. I am huge advocate of directly reaching out to struggling
students (i.e., missing class, not submitting assignments, low grades), using video
feedback to supplement written feedback for low performing students and humanizing
elements in asynchronous classes.
Diana Lenko
MVS School of Business & Economics, MBA Program
As a part-time lecturer, I understand the ongoing struggle to seek information about professional faculty development and the challenge of bouncing ideas off each other. I am very motivated to build the community and help point you to the right path to get information.
I am learning as I go. I am very open to trying new things. Please reach out to discuss
ideas for student engagement; course organization, and planning; finding the right
balance between synchronous and asynchronous sessions; staying connected with virtual
office hours; using Zoom to ensure active online learning.
I feel strongly about developing and promoting alternate assignments that foster lasting,
meaningful, and joyful engagement in my class.
Danna Lomax
School of Education
I welcome the opportunity to collaborate on anything you want to explore in support of students. As a Canvas builder in the k-12 world, I have experience with backward mapping from outcomes and creating course modules in a variety of subject areas.
My interests include centering student voice, making space for courageous conversations and building community through a variety of assignments that incorporate multiple perspectives and Social and Emotional learning experiences. I love Community Circles! Also, given that some of our students are emergent bilinguals, in my courses, I focus on language acquisition. I work to incorporate supports for students to acquire language and strategies, as well as content knowledge into my courses.
Melissa Miller
Liberal Studies/SOE
I've taught for 14 years in K-8 Public Education and as a lecturer for 13 years at CSUCI (Liberal Studies/SOE). I am an Induction Mentor for Ventura Unified School District, CUE Presenter for Technology Uses in Education, and a Canvas Presenter.
Robin Mitchell
History
Robin Mitchell is an Associate Professor of History at the California State University Channel Islands (CI). She received her master’s degree in Late Modern European History from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her doctorate in Late Modern European History from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her dissertation investigated the correlation between representations of black women in France and the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution. In addition to numerous published journal articles, Professor Mitchell’s first book, entitled VÉNUS NOIRE: Black Women & Colonial Fantasies in 19th-Century France was published with University of Georgia Press in January of 2020.
William H. Munroe
Chemistry
I’m happy to discuss many items that could be beneficial for your teaching. Topics
that I may be able to help you with include assessment ideas on Canvas, community
building for online courses, flipped classrooms, OER materials, and other ideas to
help with student engagement for online courses.