Dr. Nadia Naffi is an Assistant Professor of Educational Technology in the Department of Teaching and Learning Studies at the Faculty of Education and holder of the Chair in Educational Leadership (CLE) in Innovative Pedagogical Practices in Digital Contexts – National Bank at Université Laval.
Until June 2023, she co-led the Education and Empowerment axis at the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technologies (OBVIA). She also chaired the university’s Institutional Committee on Pedagogical Innovation (CIE)
Naffi holds a doctorate in education (educational technology) and a master’s degree in educational technology from Concordia University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in interior design from the Lebanese American University.
Naffi has taught online and face-to-face courses in the areas of digital media, instructional design, human performance technology (HPT), distance education, social technologies and the socio-cultural aspects of learning, consulting in edtech, and qualitative research methods at Ontario Tech University and Concordia University. She currently teaches multimodal courses in educational technology at Université Laval.
A prolific polyglot author, she has publications in refereed journals, conference proceedings, book chapters, and book reviews. She has given presentations at scientific conferences, organized panels, offered keynote lectures, and invited presentations. Naffi has written opinion pieces which she has published in high-impact journals such as La Presse, The Conversation, The Gazette, The Huffington Post, Maclean’s, The National Post, Franceinfotv, and Ouest-France. She has given interviews to the media, and appeared on TV and radio. She has presented at high-profile events such as at the SSHRC Impact Awards at Rideau Hall, before the Governor General of Canada. She has received several invitations to offer workshops in the context of summer schools and professional development days.
As a doctoral student, Naffi has received numerous awards for the excellence of her doctoral research. Her project focussed on how host society youth construe online content about the Syrian refugee crisis after the terror attacks. It addressed how hate, fear, and prejudice spread through social media. She identified a five-step model called Get Ready to Act Against Social Media Propaganda, which can be used in educational contexts to disrupt hate discourses. First, she was funded by the FRQSC and SSHRC and received scholarships from the Department of Education at Concordia University. She was named Concordia Public Scholar in 2017-2018 to represent Concordia University in the media, she was a winner of the SSHRC’s Storytellers national competition, a finalist for Concordia University’s My 180-second thesis competition, a winner of ACFAS’s My Thesis in 3 minutes competition, and she won the President’s Media Outreach Award (2016-2017) for excellence in communications. She was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal of Canada – Individual and Society 2018 for the excellence of her doctoral thesis.
Naffi is also the recipient of the SALTISE 2019 Best Practices & Pedagogical Innovators Award, and the John F. Lemieux Young Alumni Medal. This prestigious medal is awarded to a recent graduate of Concordia University (within the last ten years) who has demonstrated an innovative spirit and next-generation approach in the pursuit of excellence, pushing the boundaries in their field.
As Chairholder, Naffi is interested in pedagogical innovation in digital contexts as well as competency development for the future of work. Her research focuses on :
- The ethical, critical, responsible and sustainable application of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence in education, training, talent development, and upskilling and reskilling of the current and future workforce;
- The approaches in human performance technology to facilitate the intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral inclusion and integration of the current and future workforce in tomorrow’s labour market and the co-existence in the digital and AI era through which humans and machines collaborate to facilitate and develop collaborative intelligence and humans’ augmented intelligence;
- Digital citizenship and agency to combat online disinformation in the form of deepfake.
Her research receives funding from SSHRC, Canadian Heritage and the ministère de l’Économie, de l’Innovation et de l’Énergie.
Naffi is affiliated with the Centre de recherche et d’intervention sur l’éducation et la vie au travail (CRIEVAT), the Observatoire international sur les impacts sociétaux de l’IA et du numérique (OBVIA) – axe éducation et capacitation, the Centre de recherche et d’intervention sur la réussite scolaire (CRIRES), the Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire sur l’intégration pédagogique des technologies (GRIIPTIC), the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la formation et la profession enseignante, Université Laval (CRIFPE-Laval), the EducationMakers at Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, and the Educational Informatics Lab (EILAB).
