Teaching Portfolio (Before 2019)

Dina El-Zanfaly, Ph.D.

My teaching experience spans courses in several institutions, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, and Carnegie Mellon University, CMU. At CMU, I have brought my interaction design and computation expertise to graduate and undergraduate courses on user experience, social innovation, interaction design, and design research methods. I have taught more than seven unique core courses over the past two years. I have been teaching the interaction design core studio for first-year master’s students, in which one of the projects by a team of four students, Chef, won two awards in Core 77. I also created an elective based on my research to provide students an opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research. This course has been recently added to CMU’s IDEATe, the Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology program. Five values shape my teaching philosophy:1) I emphasize in the studio that we are designing human experiences and interactions, regardless of the technology medium, 2) thinking through making, 3) reflective practice, 4) knowledge transfer and 5) design is always a conversation. Going forward, I will build more connections with the industry to bring corporate sponsors to the classroom.

Pedagogical Research and Student Work