Shaun Iles dropped out of high school to become a professional snowboarder. He ended up selling snowboards in a mall instead. 

Some people would accept that and carry on. Not Shaun, though; he saw where his life was going and decided to change it. That was 12 years ago. Today, Shaun is a rising star in the rapidly changing world of teaching technologies. 

He also teaches classes in sociology and sustainability at Mohawk College. Not bad for someone who dropped out of high school. 

High school wasn’t easy for Shaun, but it wasn’t the learning he struggled with. “I was bored and getting into trouble. I’m not sure what it was, the teaching methodologies maybe. It just wasn’t for me so I left,” said Shaun, recalling what finally led him to drop out during his last semester of Grade 11. 

For a time, Shaun followed his dream. He taught snowboarding and competed in the sport. He even played in a band. But the fame and fortune never materialized. 

Shaun took the first step toward the life he lives today in 2001. At the time, he was living with his mother in a subsidized housing complex in Oshawa. He’d had enough of his hometown and decided to accept an offer from a friend to join them in Hamilton. 

“My mother’s neighbour lent me $20, which I’m sure was a lot for him. It was just enough to get me to Hamilton.” 

Two years later, Shaun was selling snowboards at a store in Limeridge Mall when he decided it was time to make a change. He applied to Mohawk College, hoping to get into Early Childhood or Child and Youth Worker. As a last resort he chose General Arts and Science. 

“I was rejected from ECE and Child and Youth, but I got into General Arts and Science. It ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me.” 

For the first time in his life, Shaun started to take learning seriously. “I’d never finished a book before Mohawk,” he jokes. 

He says it was because he met faculty that actually engaged him in learning and made him want to learn more. Faculty like professor and program coordinator Linda Frank, who Shaun credits with making the biggest difference to him during his time at Mohawk. He says, “she really inspired me to reach my full potential.” 

And it was Linda, who a few years later while Shaun was finishing his Bachelor of Sociology at McMaster University, who gave Shaun his first teaching gig at Mohawk. It was an unexpected career move, says Shaun, considering he had hated teachers most of his life. 

“I remember my first class. I was holding up the textbook and trembling.” 

The class was sociology. Shaun loved it and decided college was where he needed to be. 

After McMaster, Shaun went to the University of Toronto where he earned his Masters of Sustainability in Education. It was a necessary step if he wanted to make teaching at Mohawk a full-time thing. It worked. Mohawk hired Shaun as a full-time prof in 2011, and the timing couldn’t have been better. 

When he started teaching in 2007, in-class face-to-face teaching was the only way it was done, says Shaun. 

“I remember they had a system that allowed instructors to post marks online. Everyone thought that was amazing.” Then came the push for blended learning and adoption of D2L’s online learning management system. “Suddenly all these tools were available to me. I just jumped on it.” 

Jeff Rankine works as an Instructional Designer at Mohawk’s Centre for Teaching and Learning, a group tasked with supporting faculty who need to put a portion of their class material online. Jeff has worked closely with Shaun to help him get the most out of the eLearn platform. 

“Every semester starts with Shaun coming to me with a new idea on how to use eLearn,” he says. “Shaun is passionate about finding new and better ways to meet his students’ needs.” 

One of those ideas was an online simulation game for a sustainability class Shaun teaches. Shaun created the game with the help of a team of developers from the Mobile Electronic Health Development and Innovation Centre at Mohawk College.  

Students use the game to build sustainable communities in a virtual world. It’s the practical application of concepts taught in the class, and students share their successes and failures in an ongoing class discussion on the subject. 

Shaun is quick to point out that online learning doesn’t work for everyone. “I’m not going to say that every student likes it. They don’t. There are students that hate it. But for the most part, students do really well,” he says. Blended learning makes sense, he says. Students today have a lot going on and being able to control all or part of their learning can help them achieve goals that may have been out of reach a few years ago. 

Not all faculty are fans of it either, he says. And he can understand why. 

“There are a lot of seasoned professors who’ve spent a long time in front of the class. They’re master storytellers who can paint pictures with words and are really comfortable in front of the class. They fear losing that connection, and I can understand that,” he says. “But there are ways of doing that online too.” 

Just ask David Wearing, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Mohawk. A 20-year veteran of the college, David was one of those faculty who gave online learning a wide berth. Now he’s well known for his hilarious YouTube videos. 

“I’ve been told by those who know me that I can’t call myself a dinosaur anymore,” he jokes. “If that’s true it’s because Shaun encouraged me to take a deep breath and jump in. Shaun works hard to make the online as close to one-on-one as possible. He’s proof that it can be done.” 

Every year, Mohawk holds an internal conference called Inspiring Minds. It’s a chance for faculty to share best practices and to learn from each other. It was at the first of these conferences that Shaun presented on the work he was doing with eLearn. 

He ended up winning a prize for his presentation. The prize was getting to go to D2L’s annual Fusion conference. Soon after, he was asked to present at a Desire2Learn conference where his subject matter was so popular they had to move him to a giant ballroom to meet demand. He’s been a regular at D2L conferences ever since. He’s even co-presented with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. 

In 2014, Shaun travelled to Australia for D2L’s international conference. It was there that Shaun was named one of D2L’s Leading Educators for 2014, one of only five in the world to receive the recognition. Prior to that, he had also received D2L’s Desire2EXCEL Innovation Award, which recognizes individuals who display exemplary ingenuity and creativity in empowering students to achieve their academic goals. And he got a job offer. 

“I turned it down,” said Shaun. “I feel a connection (to Mohawk). It’s where I figured myself out. The faculty here really helped me out and I hope that I can one day give that back.” 

As for the snowboarding dream, Shaun still hits the slopes every winter. 

By: Sean Coffey

This story was originally published in Spring 2015 of the Mohawk Alumni In Touch magazine.