100+ hours of SME video. One teachable curriculum.
Coaching the instructors who trained 60+ AR creators for an emerging industry.

I didn't work directly with scholars. My job was to make the people who teach them better at teaching. In 2023, I used AI transcription and analysis tools to process 100+ hours of SME instruction — far more content than I could have reviewed manually. That let me identify patterns across the entire curriculum and build learning plans grounded in what was actually happening in the classroom, not just what the syllabus said.

This was the full professional learning cycle. I interviewed the subject matter experts to understand the domain. I learned enough about AR development and Lens Studio to speak the language. Then I coached two SMEs and a teaching assistant (a previous academy graduate) through eight weeks of the program — weekly check-ins, facilitating the Slack group, holding people to deadlines, and helping them adjust to the real-time needs of their students. I also crafted the rubrics for final projects, where scholars built real AR lenses and presented them to Snap team members.

In 2023, I used AI to teach myself about AR faster than I ever could have. By 2025, I had to help students figure out how to do the same thing. Between those two engagements, generative AI fundamentally changed how Snapchat approached AR technology and design. The tools scholars were using had changed. The conversations we needed to have in the classroom had changed.

By April 2025, students were entering a field where the entire industry was already using AI tools. They couldn't ignore it. But they also couldn't skip the fundamentals. The challenge was teaching people how to balance both — where to lean on AI to accelerate their work, and where to still practice the core skills by hand so they actually understood what the tools were doing for them.