Heather A. Pearson

When Heather Pearson was pursuing her M.Ed. her paper on the use of 3D printing in education was published in the #2 educational technology journal, Education and Information Technologies. She has presented her work on 3D printing in education at both academic and professional conferences and it was selected as a proceeding by SALTISE due to its ability to translate theory into practical suggestions for educators. Ms. Pearson developed her research skills further in the Special Activity project of her M.Ed. This project investigated whether educators and parents select learning software based on evidence-backed benchmarks of educational quality (e.g., formative feedback) versus simple engagement. Ms. Pearson presented the results as a proceeding and at academic conferences (AERA 2021, SRCD 2021), and published the educator research as 1st author in the #1 edtech journal (Computers & Education) and the parent research as two papers in the #3 edtech journal (British Journal of Educational Technology). It was even cited by Psychology Today as guidance for parents and educators. This work and her academic performance (4.0 GPA) earned Ms. Pearson a departmental Excellence Fellowship, an FRQSC, and a SSHRC CGSD.

In her PhD, she received the Innovate-ED grant ($20,000) from McGill’s Faculty of Education to develop and test design-based interventions that empower adolescents to use 3D printers to become self-directed learners. This work resulted in Ms. Pearson publishing a systematic review on maker activities that foster self-directed learning in the International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, attended a skill-up on 3D printing at MIT, developed, delivered, and tested her intervention in partnership with educators at a Montreal High School, presented the results at AERA in 2025, and provided professional development on 3D printing to educators. In addition to her dissertation research, she co-authored a designed-based intervention on elementary children’s digital literacy skills in the Journal of Experimental Education and published two more works on how educators and parents choose Apps for classrooms (both in Computers & Education).

All of Heather’s work demonstrates she is worthy of the SALTISE Students as Educational Innovators Award 2026.