Lecturer, Educational Studies
About
Jeff Stanzler is the director of the Interactive Communications & Simulations (ICS) group, which creates and facilitates Web-based simulations and writing projects for a worldwide network of upper elementary, middle school, and high school students. Stanzler teaches several courses each year in which university students serve as mentors for ICS activities that explore, for example, contemporary North Africa or the Arab-Israeli conflict, and in which these university students immerse themselves in the subject of the activities, while simultaneously exploring the pedagogical issues involved in supporting the work of the younger students. These projects involve cross-campus collaborations with the School of Information, the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, the Michigan Community Scholars Program, and the Program on Intergroup Relations, as well as partnerships with colleagues at the UM-Flint campus and at several partner universities. Stanzler has also been on the faculty of the Secondary MAC program for several years, and he currently teaches the MAC “Teaching with Technology” course.
Stanzler works in the design of Web-based curricular activities and mentorship, with a special focus on the educational uses of simulation. He is also very interested in the nature of Web-based communication and in exploring its affordances and constraints. He has a particular interest in the intellectual and social development of college students, and in how they draw upon their college experience to craft, and then enact their understandings of effective teaching and mentorship.
