David Parsons, BA, Cert Ed, PG Cert, MPhil, PhD

My main interest is in how technology can help to transform teaching and learning, without putting the technology before the pedagogy

I am Research Director for academyEX, a private graduate school in innovation and education based in Auckland, New Zealand. I am also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. My original degree, from the University of Sussex in the UK, was in Music, but I soon changed track and did my higher qualifications (PGCE, Master’s and PhD) in Computer Science and Information Technology. I began my career in the UK as a Lecturer in Computing in London colleges, then became a Senior Lecturer in the Systems Engineering Faculty at Southampton Institute (Southampton Solent University). Following this, I worked for several years as an IT consultant at various companies, including The Object People, BEA Systems, and Valtech, working across Europe and North America and serving as a certified training partner for Oracle and IBM. In 2003, I emigrated to New Zealand to take up an academic role at Massey University, firstly as a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems and later as Associate Professor of Information Technology, while also doing some external training work for Software Education Associates. I moved to my role at academyEX (under its former name of The Mind Lab) in 2015 and have remained there since, with a brief secondment to Unitec as Associate Professor (Research) during the 2017-18 PBRF process.

In addition to my main role at academyEX I have also acted as a subject matter expert for the Open Polytechnic and a course developer for UC Online, and contributed to a range of international education projects. One of my current research interests is in the development of AI literacy in education.

Among other things, I am a certified member of the Association for Learning Technology. I am a lifelong learner, and over the last few years, I have achieved certifications in Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, and completed a postgraduate micro-credential in Organisational Agility and a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning Design.