TLi is excited to introduce our 2025-2026 Digital Learning Mentors! The Digital Learning Mentor (DLM) program is back this year to provide individualized peer support for faculty. Whether you’re teaching in person, online, or in a blended format, DLMs are available to support you in developing high quality, innovative digital teaching and learning practices.
What is the Role of Digital Learning Mentors?
Digital Learning Mentors are faculty members with training, interest, and experience in digital learning. With the support of TLi’s digital learning team, they provide one-to-one peer support for faculty that ranges from broad discussion of digital pedagogy to exploring ways to use specific tools to achieve specific outcomes.
This year, we have two Digital Learning Mentors focused primarily on supporting faculty interested in AI diffusion in higher education, and one focused primarily on student-centered course design, community building, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and building bilingual courses. They come from diverse technical backgrounds and disciplinary perspectives, so whether you’re exploring AI tools and applications for your courses, considering ways to help students make decisions about AI use and information literacy, or looking for strategies to build more inclusive courses, you’ll find a supportive DLM available to help. All DLMs are also well-connected as an extension of the Teaching and Learning Innovations team, and they can point you to the right places if you have specific goals in mind. Digital Learning Mentors are available for consults via email and/or Zoom.
What Kinds of Support Can Digital Learning Mentors Provide?
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
Meet This Year’s Digital Learning Mentors
Below, you’ll find a little more information about each of our DLMs and the areas in which they’re offering mentorship, in their own words:
Breeann Austin (Library) writes:
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.
Danna Lomax (Education) writes:
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!
Kristen Linton (Health Science) writes:
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.
To learn about your DLMs and find links to connect with them, please visit our Digital Learning Mentor website. Mentors are partnering with TLi for the 2025-2026 academic year, and we’re thrilled to be working with them!
