Professional Bio

Dr. Teshia Young Roby earned a PhD in Education with an emphasis on Instructional Design and Technology from Georgia State University. 
Dr. Roby also earned a Master’s in Instructional Technology from Georgia State University, an MBA from the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Clemson University.  Dr. Roby is an assistant professor in the College of Education and Integrative Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona where she teaches graduate courses in multimedia development and instructional design in the Educational Multimedia program; undergraduate courses in culture, identity, and technology in the Ethnic and Women’s Studies department; and an educational technologies integration course in the Teacher Education credentials program.

Dr. Roby is a Cal Poly Pomona Provost’s Teacher-Scholar with research interests in:

• The classroom implications of digital storytelling from both the instructor and student perspectives
• Inclusion of culture as a pedagogical philosophy
• Effective educational uses of collaborative, innovative, and Web 2.0 technologies, and
• Implementation of successful active learning and group collaboration opportunities in classroom, online, and distributed teaching and learning environments. 

Dr. Roby is the facilitator for the Content-Related Digital Storytelling (CoRDS) Faculty Development Learning community; served as the faculty consultant and co-facilitator for the Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 Technology Faculty Learning Community at Cal Poly Pomona, a program funded and sponsored by Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant; and is the founder of the OPUS Collective, a collection of culture- and identity-inclusive digital stories created by students and educators.

From her academic, professional, and personal experiences, Dr. Roby believes that acknowledgement and acceptance of the whole learner within the classroom setting promotes shared understanding and academic efficacy.  She explains her perspective as follows:

Every student at every educational level in every discipline benefits from exposure to the viewpoints, identities, and home cultures of the members of the learning community within the context of the curriculum and beyond.  Authentic inclusion of the whole learner not only increases confidence and enhances knowledge transfer, but it also promotes social transformation among the members of the learning community.