Adam Finkelstein is currently Associate Director, Learning Environments in the Office of the Associate Provost (Teaching and Academic Planning) at McGill University where he develops university-wide initiatives to improve teaching and learning environments. His responsibilities include both the physical (learning spaces) as well as the digital (online ecosystem of teaching and learning tools). He and his team have worked with thousands of instructors to help them improve their teaching and learning with many faculty development initiatives, from active learning, to assessment, to inclusive space design and generative AI. He is currently the Chair of the group responsible for the selection, design and renovation of all classrooms and teaching labs at McGill, including numerous new Active Learning Classrooms and Labs. He is currently Co-Lead of the Learning Spaces Design Community Group for EDUCAUSE and is a member of core team and author of the Learning Spaces Rating System (LSRS). Adam has over 20 years of experience with innovative physical and digital learning spaces including designing, teaching, and assessing them. He is the recipient of the 2024 Community Leadership Award from EDUCAUSE and has given numerous international keynotes, presentations, and workshops in many different areas such as learning science, learning technologies and learning spaces.
Increasingly, artificial intelligence is becoming a competency that rests in the hands of each individual person—an individual capability rather than just, or even primarily, an institutional one. The Human Edge of AI is issue #2 in the 2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10.
Higher education institutions should be data literacy and decision-making exemplars for the rest of the world, embodying best practices in thoughtful analysis and sound judgment. Decision-Maker Data Skills and Literacy is issue #10 in the 2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10.
Emerging technologies show great promise for engaging students in more active and personalized learning and deeper participation in collaboration. By facilitating deeper engagement in learning on the part of students, emerging technologies can support current trends in learning design, including improving the way we assess how students learn and what they are learning.
| Status: | Yes, current member |