Biography
I served an LDS mission to Curitiba, Brazil from 1997-1999. After returning from my mission, I pursued a bachelor's degree in Spanish, with a minor in TESOL. Following a semester teaching adult literacy in rural Mexico, I married my sweetheart, Paulina Alejandra, a Chilean I met while studying at BYU. I worked with BYU and the Provo School district creating instructional materials and soon pursued a degree in Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia. Since 2007, I have been with the BYU IP&T faculty and have thoroughly enjoyed it and the students we get to work with.
As a faculty member, I have been able to pursue my interests in better understanding how people learn, the design and development of instructional materials, and teaching children how to program and to think like engineers. I do this through helping children to create games, which encourages learning through design, a pedagogical approach I have found to be effective in creating lasting memory, retention, and interest.
Research Interests
I have several different research interests that I have pursued throughout my career.Current
Computational Thinking
I am currently working on understanding and promoting computational thinking in K-8 education. This is founded in work I've done with Convergent Cognition, a theory that examines how learning two complementary subjects leads to a stronger foundation of knowledge. Currently, I work with elementary school teachers to enable them to teach programming and engineering concepts to children.Games in learning
One of the ways we have encourage kids to learn to program is through the development of games. Learning by design is an effective pedagogy and we have found the context to be motivating for many students. As we have worked with games, my interest and work with learning games has increased to the point where I am now mentoring graduate students in the design and development of learning games and collaborating with colleagues on course gamification.
If you are interested in working with me on any of these projects, please contact me at peter_rich@byu.edu.
Historical
For the first several years, I worked with Video Annotation Tools to better understand how to improve teaching through video self-analysis. This work culminated in an edited book about video analysis in teacher education that brings together leading scholars and their research in this area.
Game-based design and learning,
Teaching Interests
Technology Integration (IP&T 372)Instructional Design (IP&T 564, IP&T 664),
Instructional Product Development (IP&T 560; IP&T 660; IP&T 760R; IP&T 515R, 002)
Educational Psychology (formerly IP&T 301, IP&T 420)
Applied Creativity (IP&T 692R)
Honors and Awards
- CTETE Outstanding Research Publication Award, ITEEA Council on Technology and Engineering Teacher Education. (2023 - 2023)
- Outstanding Sponsored Accepted Proposaal, Association for Educational Communications & Technology. Research and Theory Division (2019 - 2019)
- 2015 Outstanding Journal Article, Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (2015 - 2015)
- AECT Pacificorp Design & Development Competition, Design & Development Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (2015 - 2015)
- MED Best Paper in Management Education Award, OBTS and the Journal of Management Education (2015 - 2015)
- Pacificorp Design & Development Competition, Pacificorp (2014 - 2014)
Memberships
- Association for Educational Communications and Technology (2005 - Present)
Professional Citizenship
- Other, Provo School District (2014 - Present)
- Other, Provo School District (2014 - Present)
- Guest Speaker, Utah Valley University (2015 - 2015)