My early teaching was in courses such as research methods and racial inequality. Those topics still interest me. However, these days my teaching is narrowly focused on teaching aspects of cybercrime and online (or cyber) deviance. Over the last few years with the growth of AI, my goal has been to move beyond traditional lectures and exams to more project based and (ironically for me) more activities in the analog, physical world.
My teaching at Old Dominion University centers on four courses that introduce students to cybercrime and online deviance while emphasizing the application of knowledge to real-world problems (click links for available Fall 2026 syllabi):
- Cybercriminology: Foundations – A lower-level introductory course that examines cybercrime through sociological and criminological perspectives.
- Crime and Computer Applications – An upper-level, project based lab course where students learn to use digital investigative tools and techniques to examine cybercrime.
- Analysis of Online Deviance – An upper-level research-oriented course in which students conduct original research examining behavior, social norms, and deviance in digital environments.
- Entrepreneurship in Cybercriminology – A project-based course in which students draw on their knowledge and skills to develop innovative solutions to real-world problems.
Highlights
- The Cybercriminology Program at Old Dominion University — I was given the opportunity to create and coordinate ODU’s cybercriminology program. This was a new type of program that combines criminology and cybersecurity to prepare students for careers addressing issues in cybercrime. I have created promotional materials to help introduce what is still a very new program to prospective students.
- Rozzer: AI for Cybercriminology — Rozzer is an AI-supported educational environment I am developing. It will have two purposes: a front-end that interacts with the general public and explains cybercriminology from an evidence based and theoretically grounded perspective. This version will be trained on purposefully selected materials. Rozzer will also be available to students I teach. However, this version will be restricted from public use and trained on the materials used in my courses and in our department. I see personalized, context-aware tools owned and operated by individual academics as a future of higher education. They are also a type of “product” individual academics can take ownership of. Rozzer will be live to the public by January 2026.
- Cybersecurity Gamification Project — Developed with Ms. Medina Williams a PhD student in educational design, this project explored how games can be used to teach cybersecurity and cybercrime prevention. For this project we created a small “choose your own adventure” game to instruct learners on basic cybersecurity concepts. We discussed the game and our experiences in a 2025 article, Using Gamification to Teach Cybersecurity in a Social Science Course: An Experience Paper.