Don Boyes

Don Boyes is Associate Dean, Teaching & Learning, Director of the Online Learning Academy, and Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Geography and Planning, in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto. He is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the Canadian Association of Geographers Award for Excellence in Teaching Geography and the University of Toronto President's Teaching Award, and is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He specializes in GIScience education and has a strong interest in digital pedagogy. Don has experience teaching courses in person, as well as in online and hybrid modes and in the HyFlex format. He created and continues to offer a series of four massive open online courses (MOOCs) as a Coursera specialization, taken by thousands of students around the world and for which he has been designated a "top instructor". Don's M.Sc. and Ph.D. research explored the use of spatial analysis and satellite imagery to understand the geomorphological evolution of the Mackenzie River Delta in the Northwest Territories. During his doctoral program he lived north of the Arctic Circle in the town of Inuvik for over a year and became a freelance GIS consultant, mainly working with Indigenous resource management organizations.