My name is Michael. I’ve worked in higher ed for almost 15 years helping faculty, staff, and students find new and meaningful ways to use technology to enhance their teaching and learning. I’ve also collaborated with subject matter experts, faculty and instructional designers to design and develop fully online courses, presented for high school and college audiences on social media and educational technology, lead training sessions on how to design presentations that don’t suck, and have a background in faculty training for e-learning technologies.
Presenting and training are passions of mine. I love using comedy to talk about social media and how it affects our lives, our learning, and our future. I’ve done this in front of over 50,000 people in the past decade. My most popular session is called How Social Media Affects Us. This is a comedic presentation targeted at high school and college students that challenges them to think about how social media affects their lives and lifestyles. You can view the a version of this presentation on the How Social Media Affects Us page.
My experiences as a presenter led me to create a training series on effective presentation design. These sessions incorporate research-supported concepts and strategies from the world of neuroscience. I’ll teach you how to make better presentations by helping you develop new ways of thinking about design (even if you have little to no design experience). Learn more about what I can help you do on the Effective Presentation Design page.
This is some other stuff I’ve done
At Elon University I co-founded the Maker Hub, Elon’s first makerspace, alongside my colleague Dan Reis. The Maker Hub is the result of nearly two years of building and nurturing the maker community on campus to establish support for a formal space. They have amazing student staff, a great collection of supplies and equipment, ongoing maker events (check our site for anything upcoming), and an innovative grant program for student projects.
I also serve as a member of the Advisory Board for the REALISE (REALising Inclusive Science Excellence in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics) project at Radford University. The REALISE project is a five-year program supported by a $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
This is Luna
She’s an adorable love sponge who gives awesome high fives.
This is Ava
She is the captain now.
This is my email
I can be reached via email at michael@michael-vaughn.com. Owl service is currently unavailable. Blame the dementors.
Top photo by carolynscottphotography.com