Rebecca M. Quintana is the Associate Director of Learning Experience Design at the Center for Academic Innovation at the  University of Michigan (U-M). She is also an Adjunct Lecturer at U-M's School of Education. 

In her role of Associate Director, Learning Experience Design, Quintana uses a learner-centered approach to design and develop online learning experiences for diverse audiences of global learners. Partnering with faculty across the University, Quintana is involved in design and evaluation for a wide range of courses across U-M’s online portfolio. Central to this work is a commitment to equity-focused  design approaches that value diversity and inclusion. 

Quintana's research focuses on integrating community-oriented approaches within the design of technology-enhanced learning environments. Her research encompasses novel representations to support learning design teams, analytic tools to characterize online pedagogies, and use of educational technologies to create rich opportunities for social interaction. 

Quintana's  doctoral research centered on the role visual representations can play in collaborative knowledge construction, specifically within rich simulation environments in middle school science classrooms. 

Quintana is active in several research communities and has presented extensively in conferences such as the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), the Computer-supported Collaborative Learning Conference (CSCL), and the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). Quintana’s research has been published in outlets such as Instructional Science, Tech Trends, and the Online Teaching and Learning Journal. Quintana and her colleagues were presented with a Best Paper award at the American Educational Research Association by the Online Teaching and Learning Special Interest Group in 2018.  

Quintana is a certified teacher with teaching experience spanning 25 years within a variety of K-16 contexts, including teaching core subjects at the elementary level and visual arts at the secondary level.