Stands as a trailblazer in the realm of higher education, Robbie K. Melton is wielding a wealth of experience as the Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and for the National SMART Technology Innovation Center at Tennessee State University. Her distinguished career showcases a commitment to advancing education through strategic planning and training in emerging Internet of Everything (IOE) smart connected technologies and technology innovation showcases.

As a Keynote Speaker, Author, Researcher, Consultant, Trainer, and Tech Evaluator, Robbie’s multifaceted expertise spans various facets of the educational landscape. Her focus on emerging immersive technologies, such as augmented and virtual reality, reveals a keen understanding of their transformative potential. Through rigorous research, she has witnessed the unique power of these technologies to ignite profound moments of insight, fostering a deeper understanding of abstract concepts among students.

Robbie’s advocacy for ethical development and conscientious use of emerging technologies is evident in her approach to virtual reality design. By intentionally incorporating diverse student avatars and perspectives through community participation, she strives to create culturally resonant and inclusive immersive experiences that transcend backgrounds.

Beyond her leadership in immersive technologies, Robbie is recognized as an “Appologist” among educators. Her extensive research on evaluating and integrating mobile apps in an educational context has led to the creation of a comprehensive Mobile App Resource Center. This valuable repository offers educators guidance on thoughtfully incorporating smartphones, tablets, and wearables to enhance diverse teaching and learning environments.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI), Robbie emerges as a prominent national researcher, speaker, author, and advisor. Her focus on conveying AI’s transformative potential underscores the need for critical evaluation and ethical implementation. Melton guides educators to view AI as an ally, enriching human teaching and wisdom rather than replacing it. Her advocacy encourages institutions to deploy AI systems that expand, rather than constrict, human creativity and potential.

Catalyst for Change

Robbie’s passion for equity in education took root in inner-city Detroit, where she witnessed the resilience and resourcefulness of people striving to access basic opportunities despite limited resources. These experiences became the catalyst for dedicating her career to driving change by empowering others through quality education.

Being the first in her family to graduate college marked a significant milestone that opened doors, profoundly shaping Robbie’s path. Her educational journey continued with achievements such as earning a doctorate in Education Administration from the University of Michigan and graduate degrees (Ed.S. and M/Ed.) in Special Education from Wayne State University. Through this academic pursuit, Robbie recognized the immense power of thoughtfully designed and implemented emerging technologies to transform teaching and learning. These technologies had the potential to make education more engaging, interactive, adaptive, and accessible.

As a tenured full professor, Robbie actively incorporated tools into her instruction that reflected diverse cultures and learning styles. Witnessing firsthand the transformative potential of technology in uplifting and amplifying the voices of underserved students, she emerged as a vocal advocate for the broader and more strategic adoption of education technologies at the institutional level. Robbie’s journey underscores the belief that equitable access to quality education, coupled with innovative technologies, can be a powerful force for positive change in the lives of students, particularly those facing challenges in underserved communities.

Bridging the Digital Divide

A fundamental aspect of Robbie’s work revolves around the reduction of digital inequities by expanding access to technology and online learning. Having witnessed the challenges arising from the lack of access to devices, internet connectivity, and digital skills among underserved students, she recognizes how these barriers hinder their educational progress. Robbie is committed to bridging the “digital divide” through initiatives that provide technology resources and training, ultimately leveling the playing field.

With the prevalence of online and hybrid learning, Robbie emphasizes the crucial importance of ensuring that digitally-disconnected students are not left behind. Her mission is to make access universal, democratizing educational opportunities by placing technology, connectivity, and digital fluency within reach for every student. Narrowing existing digital divides is seen as essential to creating pathways for all students to leverage technology’s immense potential for learning and growth. Robbie believes that equity of access is pivotal to fulfilling technology’s promise for empowerment.

As artificial intelligence plays an increasing role in transforming education, Robbie is focused on ensuring that these potentially powerful tools do not exacerbate digital divides. Instead, she advocates for their ethical implementation to open new doors of opportunity. Expanded access, coupled with inclusive adoption of AI, has the potential to drive equity in education.

Robbie has spearheaded initiatives to implement online learning, viewing it as a vehicle for inclusion, personalization, and empowerment. In her role as Associate Vice Chancellor for the Tennessee Board of Regents, she played a key role in launching systemwide online degree programs that specifically targeted non-traditional and marginalized learners facing barriers to attending traditional, in-person programs. By thoughtfully integrating these technologies with personalized support services, they successfully helped these students thrive in their courses and beyond. Breaking down longstanding structural barriers to educational access has allowed Robbie to foster a richer, more diverse community of lifelong learners across institutions.

Encouraging Diversity in Tech

At Tennessee State University’s National SMART Technology Innovation Center, Robbie emphasizes that inclusion, ethics, and equity remain central to their mission. The university is dedicated to reflecting the diversity of communities in all initiatives, actively recruiting and elevating women and students of color into technology fields and leadership roles.

In pursuit of these goals, the university’s youth outreach programs creatively leverage technology to empower disadvantaged students, enabling them to discover and amplify their voices. Recognizing the interest in gaming and esports among students, the university has established Academic eSports programs that integrate various aspects, including video game design, streaming, broadcasting, team coordination, and technology skills, into the curriculum.

Through these programs, students not only engage in hands-on education, training, and competition experiences but also build real-world digital media, computer science, and business competencies. The Academic eSports initiatives serve as an engaging on-ramp for students from diverse backgrounds to explore technology fields, unlock their potential, and pursue new opportunities.

Robbie views Academic eSports as a manifestation of the university’s commitment to meeting students where their passions lie and elevating those interests as springboards for both academic and professional growth. By integrating technology and esports into the curriculum, the university aims to create pathways that empower students, especially those from diverse backgrounds, to explore, thrive, and excel in technology-related fields.

Cultivating Equity-Driven Innovation

Robbie’s formative experiences growing up in inner-city Detroit have instilled in her a passionate belief that innovation must serve equity, not the other way around. While recognizing the potential of emerging technologies to transform education, she emphasizes the importance of guiding these innovations intentionally with diverse perspectives.

At Tennessee State University’s Center, where new learning tools and platforms are piloted and evaluated, an inclusive design approach is employed. This involves proactively gathering input from marginalized communities to address unconscious bias in development. Robbie and her team consistently measure success not solely by the sophistication of the technology but by its tangible outcomes and social impact, particularly for historically underserved students.

Having organized large-scale technology showcases over the years, Robbie has learned that meaningful innovation thrives through extensive collaboration. By curating dynamic events that transcend institutional, geographic, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries, she understands at her core that substantially enhancing education requires drawing from a diversity of viewpoints and lived experiences.

The showcases have become platforms for showcasing inclusive and human-centered models and practices, inspiring committed attendees to apply an equity lens to technology initiatives in their own schools and systems. By facilitating rich interactive forums that connect dedicated educators and innovators, Robbie has sparked ripple effects of positive change that ultimately impact countless classrooms, campuses, and communities over time. The commitment to inclusivity and collaboration underscores her belief that technology-driven innovations should be guided by a deep understanding of diverse perspectives to ensure meaningful impact and positive change in education.

Approach to Ethical Leadership in Education

As an education leader, Robbie continually strives to strike an optimal balance between strategic implementation and inclusive innovation. While recognizing the promise of emerging technologies in enhancing educational capabilities, she is also mindful of the potential risks, limitations, and unintended consequences that may arise. Robbie believes it is crucial to evaluate even the most compelling tools with a discerning eye, considering all dimensions of these complex systems before integrating them into schools and curricula.

Beyond evaluating capabilities, Robbie emphasizes the need to weigh difficult questions related to ethics, access, systemic impacts, privacy, security, biases, and more. She stresses the importance of centering marginalized communities too often left out of technological advancements. While advocating for careful planning and change at the system level, Robbie encourages calculated risk-taking at the classroom level. In this space, inspired educators and students can pioneer new applications that make learning more relevant, equitable, and engaging.

Over the years, Robbie has received numerous accolades, including being named one of the Top 50 Women Leaders in Education for 2023. She was inducted into the USDLA Hall of Fame in 2019 and received the Distinguished Woman of Legend Award in 2018. Additionally, she received the OLC Leadership Award in 2017, recognition as a Top 30 Technologist in 2014, an Apple Distinguished Educator honor in 2013, the Top Fifty Technology Innovators distinction from the Center for Digital Education in 2012, and EdTech Digest Awards in 2012. These recognitions reflect Robbie’s lifelong dedication to empowering diverse learners and communities by leveraging technology thoughtfully, ethically, and purposefully.

Empowering Future Generations

According to Robbie, the lessons learned growing up in inner-city Detroit continue to fuel her efforts today. She vividly recalls the systemic barriers and daily obstacles faced by families like hers and remains committed to leveraging her role to help dismantle those inequities for current and future students. Robbie’s life’s work embraces technology’s immense potential as a tool for student empowerment and social justice, always centering equity and ethics at the core. The doors that education opened for her compel her to keep pushing those doors open wider for new generations of aspiring innovators.

Throughout her lifelong journey, Robbie has learned that despite the progress made, we have likely only glimpsed the surface of what is possible at the intersection of technology and education. There will always be new opportunities and responsibilities to leverage emerging technologies ethically to expand access, empower the marginalized, and enrich instruction in ways that open minds and bring people together. As the future continues to accelerate and unfold in new directions that cannot always be predicted, Robbie remains firmly committed to nurturing cultures of innovation that keep equity, ethics, justice, and inclusion at the core.

Looking ahead, Robbie sees immense potential for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence to radically transform and open access to education globally. However, realizing that potential will require centering ethics, equity, and inclusion every step of the way. Guided by shared humanity and vision, AI systems can help personalize learning and reveal blind spots in ways that empower students and educators alike. While technology will never replace the dignity and potential of the human spirit, embraced thoughtfully, it can expand horizons to reveal boundless beauty in ourselves and each other.

Robbie states, “The accelerating innovations of today harbor world-changing possibilities to illuminate new solutions to old inequities – if we remain bold, creative and committed to uplift our shared futures in ways we cannot yet imagine.” She further adds, “I am energized by the challenges and promise of this journey we are on together.”

Please visit: http://www.tnstate.edu