Dr. Patrick Pennefather (BFA, MFA, PhD) is an Assistant Professor enjoying a co-appointment with UBC Theatre and Film at UBC teaching, mentoring and conducting research, and at the Master of Digital Media Program where he teaches and supervises digital media grad students. For the past ten years he has iterated on a course called Interdisciplinary Improvisation and has supervised and mentored over 42 client-based digital media projects with teams of 5-7 learners.
The improv course he teaches at the MDM Program and beginning in 2021 at UBC are aligned in their approach to support learners in: 1)Cultivating an increased awareness of the spontaneous actions and interactions that occur when working on projects with others; 2) Exercising improv abilities using tools and processes that increase alignment with others during any creative pipeline, and; 3)Reflecting on how these might improve the creative, collaborative, design and management of a project.
In the project-based learning courses, he empowers learners to transform into creative and effective collaborators on multi-disciplinary project teams with the end goal of becoming the designers of their own digital future. His innovative/iterative approach as an educator is fueled by ongoing research into collaborative practices, project-based learning, mentoring, self-regulation, and a relentless commitment to bridging the gap between what he designs and teaches, and what is demanded by a rapidly changing, team-based digital media industry. He has mentored, managed and designed instruction on the MDM Program’s industry-funded projects from mobile apps to VR projects with the following client collaborators: InTransit BC, Anthymn, Bateman Centre Interactive Visualization Project (BCIVP), Big Bertha Studios, Business Simulation Training, Carbon Chaos 2010, Chinchilla, Clarity Toolkit: Bringing Business Back To Its Senses, CODEstruction, CoLab, Community Pulse, Curate Your Own Collection, CyberPatient, D-Sign Touchless Interactive Systems, Digital Decisions, Eagle Eye, Fashion Game, GO, kindamals, Man Kind, Man Up Canada , Mirage, Monsterholic, O:N Studios, Precipice, Pwny Arcade, RAMsquared, RDM, Redshift, Shift Seven Interactive, Sofa So Good, Studio 777, TaxiCity: Vancouver, Team Labyrinth, The Road Less Travelled, THESIX, Timber, UBC Fisheries Project, V-Track Project, Virtual Rainforest Initiative, WOMP!, YATTA
Patrick continues to support educators and programs worldwide and is in-demand at various institutions and conferences internationally in Canada, China, Japan and the United States. Most recently he has designed a number of innovative courses on EdX including: Human Centered Design for Work at a Distance.