Hannah Rossiter M.Ed.
Doctoral Researcher
About
I'm an educator and instructional designer completing my Ph.D. in Educational Technology at the University of Northern Colorado. My work lives where teaching, design, and technology meet, and my throughline is simple: build learning experiences and tools that make a classroom more humane and better organized for the people actually in it.
Before doctoral study, I taught in Denver Public Schools and Jeffco Public Schools and led programs as an Education Director at Sylvan Learning. I hold a Colorado Professional Teaching License with an ESL endorsement, and I care especially about multilingual learners and equitable access. I'm also a U.S. Navy veteran, which shaped how I work: clearly, steadily, and with the whole team in mind.
My research focuses on the benefits of assistive technology in supporting secindary students with ADHD. I recently designed an adaptive classroom planner that reorganizes a teacher's week when snow days, assemblies, and half days rearrange the plan, so nothing quietly falls through the cracks. I'm now looking toward completing my dissertation and returning to the classroom to better support our tech savvy students.
Applications of Educational Technology
Original tool, educational technology
Adaptive Planner
A teacher’s week never holds still. Snow days, assemblies, half days, a surprise fire drill, a schedule change that lands in your inbox at 7 a.m.: every one of them quietly reshuffles what you had planned, and the work of piecing it all back together falls on you. I built the Adaptive Classroom Planner to carry some of that load. When a day changes, the planner lifts the affected lessons into a holding space and helps you slide them into the next open slot, so nothing simply falls through the cracks.
This is the first version of a much bigger vision. My goal is to let teachers load whole curriculums, sequencing and all, so the planner can hold the entire arc of a year, not just a single week. From there it would adjust everything automatically, reflowing lessons and pacing around both the schedule and the needs of the students in the room. I want it to support neurodivergent students and the teachers who serve them alike, built with structure that bends to the realities of a classroom instead of asking the people inside it to bend to the tool.
Blog post, Reflective Practice
Is Virtual Reality Worth All of the Hype?
During remote teaching, I used virtual museum tours and VR to give my fifth graders immersive access to the places and ideas our space unit depended on, at a time when a real field trip was impossible. What stood out was the agency it created: students moved through the Air and Space Museum at their own pace and followed their own curiosity instead of waiting on the group. It also taught me that immersive technology is not one-size-fits-all. My fifth graders could explore independently, while younger learners would need the tour guided as a whole class, which is a distinction I now carry into any tech I bring to a classroom.
Engagement in Research Practices
Presented at: AECT International Convention 2025, “Refocus the Future of Educational Technology”
Location: Las Vegas, NV, October 21 to 25, 2025
Format: Poster presentation
Research proposal, qualitative study
Beyond the Screen: Parental Insights into Supporting Technology-Based Middle Schools
For my qualitative research course, I designed a basic qualitative study examining how parents experience and support their children in fully technology-based middle schools, a group often overlooked in the conversation about educational technology. The proposal works through the full research design: three guiding questions, a grounded literature review, criterion-based purposeful sampling, semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis, with member checking and a research journal to support trustworthiness. Writing it sharpened the methodological instincts I carry into my dissertation work: staying close to participants’ own words and letting lived experience, not just outcomes, guide what I learn. It also reflects something central to how I approach research, which is my belief that every family has a story worth telling.
Independent research, survey design and analysis
Fan Voices: A Survey Study of Colorado Mammoth Theme Nights
Outside of any course, I designed and ran a study on a community question I cared about: how Colorado Mammoth season ticket holders experience the team’s theme nights. I built and administered a survey to more than 40 fans, analyzed the results using satisfaction ratings and descriptive statistics alongside thematic analysis of open-ended responses, and turned the findings into a report with data visualizations. It was a reminder that research methodology travels. The same tools I use in educational research let me turn scattered opinions into clear, evidence-based recommendations for a real organization. Designing the instrument, protecting response quality, and letting the data rather than my own assumptions tell the story were all parts of the research craft, practiced in a genuinely applied setting.
Demonstration of Innovative Pedagogy
Gamified learning, instructional design
Breaking the Code: A Gamified Review Escape Room
I designed a gamified escape room as a review activity for my own doctoral cohort before an exam. Each puzzle was tied to our course content and unlocked the code to a different treasure box, so reviewing became something my classmates did together and actively, rather than rereading notes alone. What I am proudest of is the shift in energy: a review that could have been a dry worksheet turned into a collaborative challenge, and my peers headed into the test feeling engaged and genuinely proud of what they knew. It reinforced a belief I carry into every age group I teach, that retrieval and play are not opposites, and that strong pedagogy makes people want to show what they know.
Instructional design, learning theory and ADDIE
Fractions of M&Ms: Designing a Lesson Through Learning Theory
For a hands-on fractions lesson, I designed a “Fractions of M&Ms” activity that paired an online candy simulator with a Google Form, built deliberately on learning theory and the ADDIE instructional design model. I grounded it in constructivism, beginning with what students already knew about fractions in daily life, and in cognitivism, anchoring the practice to something meaningful they would carry with them. The Google Form let me build in student choice and gather immediate data, while writing clear student learning and content language objectives kept the design aimed at a real outcome. Teaching it live became its own evaluation step: I could see exactly where to reword a question, pull back a scaffold, or add challenge for my higher learners, which is the iterative heart of instructional design.
Participation in Professional Collaboration
Co-authored study, narrative inquiry (in preparation for journal submission)
A Cultural Bridge to Alleviate Homesickness Among First- and Second-Year International Doctoral Students Through Social Media
I was part of an eight-member research team of faculty and doctoral students that studied how first- and second-year international doctoral students use social media to ease homesickness as they adjust to a new country. Using narrative inquiry, we interviewed seven students and identified four themes in how social media serves as an emotional and cultural bridge, along with its limits. Collaborating across a large, culturally diverse team taught me how to contribute my own piece while weaving it into a shared voice, and how much richer findings become when many perspectives shape the analysis.
Awareness of Critical, Social, and Global Perspectives
Co-authored study, cross-national (in preparation for journal submission)
K–12 Teachers’ AI Readiness Across Four National Contexts: The Roles of Training and Technology Experience
I contributed to this cross-national study examining how K–12 teachers in Ghana, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, and the United States are prepared to use artificial intelligence, and what shapes that readiness. Guided by the Technology Acceptance Model and self-efficacy theory, our team surveyed 142 teachers and analyzed both scaled and open-ended responses, finding that gaps that first looked national were really about access to training and hands-on experience. The work sharpened how I think about equity in educational technology on a global scale: who gets the preparation and infrastructure to use new tools, and who is left to value them from a distance.