Shaping the Future of Learning Through Research and Experience

Seth Aaron Martinez, Assistant Professor and Researcher, Boise State University

Seth Aaron Martinez brings a distinctive blend of academic depth and industry insight to his role as Assistant Professor and Researcher at Boise State University. With a Ph.D. from Indiana University and years of experience at Stanford, Adobe, and Facebook, he is redefining how people think about expertise, learning, and leadership in the modern world. His work focuses on adult learning, cognitive development, and enterprise learning technologies. Today, at Boise State, he leads research at the intersection of education, psychology, and performance—always grounded in practical, real-world application.

From Industry to Academia: A Full-Circle Journey

When I finished my doctorate at Indiana University, I was exhausted and didn’t want an academic job right away. Instead, I took a consulting role at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, helping faculty design MBA and executive education courses—which I enjoyed. But a little over a year in, Adobe reached out with a new opportunity: they asked me to lead a machine learning training program for software engineers, data scientists, and computer scientists.

It was a brand-new role, and over three years, we worked with 1,500 professionals through that program. Eventually, the system ran smoothly with minimal effort, and the challenge was gone.

At that point, Facebook contacted me. The company was building a new team and wanted someone with a Ph.D. to help shape its learning strategy. The work was similar to what I had done at Adobe but targeted a different audience. Once again, I received an offer I couldn’t pass up. I joined Facebook in 2020—deep in the pandemic at that time.

The team was incredibly talented— arguably the most competent group I have ever worked with. Still, the remote environment made it hard to stay energized, which left a lot of us burned out. While others explored moving to different tech companies, I started asking a deeper question: “Should I stay in tech at all?”

Just as I was preparing to accept an adjunct role at Pepperdine, Boise State reached out with a full-time faculty opening for that fall—only three months away. Opportunities on that timeline are rare in academia, but I was ready. I applied, interviewed, and accepted. Six weeks later, I had relocated to Boise and returned to higher education full-time.

Directing the Learning Strategy Lab

Everything we do in the Learning Strategy Lab is grounded in adult learning, cognition, and psychology. My work focuses on expertise acquisition— specifically, how individuals construct mental models as they build experience.

Our current project is aimed at learning experience designers and instructional designers across different levels of expertise. We’re observing how they think, make decisions, and solve problems. We've posed a series of questions to identify their thought processes, and now we’re interpreting the findings to uncover patterns.

“Learn to build trust, communicate clearly, and move things forward even when the path isn’t obvious. That skill is as important in education as it is in tech, and it will serve you no matter where your career takes you”

We want to sort responses by the quality and depth of thought. For example, we’re comparing the answers of novices, intermediates, and experts to understand what shifts as people gain experience. We’re also studying how their current thinking developed—with the goal of identifying strategies to help others accelerate their growth in the field.

Another focus in the lab is enterprise learning technology—tools used at scale to build skills and improve workplace performance. I’ve conducted research on virtual reality as a tool for skill development and recently completed a study on performance support systems which has just been accepted for publication.

Whether we’re examining emerging technologies or evaluating how they’re used in industry, the goal remains the same: to better understand how to improve learning outcomes and performance across organizations.

Looking Ahead: Building Better Leaders

Looking ahead, I hope to launch a new project related to leadership development. I’m specifically interested in creating and validating an instrument to assess leadership developmental readiness.

In the research, we know that someone’s readiness to grow as a leader influences how quickly and effectively they develop. Some people are highly ready; others, less so. But right now, we don’t have a validated tool to measure this. Creating such an instrument would be a valuable contribution to the field. It would give us a better way to support and design leadership development experiences that meet people where they are.

Advice for Future Education Innovators

One of the most valuable skills I’ve learned didn’t come from a textbook or a classroom. It was the ability to navigate and influence within an organization— especially when you don’t have formal authority.

In both industry and academia, a lot of work happens across dotted lines. That means no one reports to you, but you still need to build alignment, solve problems, and get things done. I learned this by watching others—how they phrased emails, how they made requests, how they handled setbacks.

Being able to influence without authority is one of the most powerful skills you can develop. It determines whether projects move forward or stall. It affects how others perceive your leadership and your value to a team.

My advice to anyone entering this space is to master that ability. Learn to build trust, communicate clearly, and move things forward—even when the path isn’t obvious. That skill is as important in education as it is in tech, and it will serve you no matter where your career takes you.

Adobe

Leadership Development

Virtual Reality

Machine Learning

Cognitive