Peyton has worked in online learning in higher education since 2014, including teaching and designing online courses, designing and facilitating faculty development courses and workshops for online teaching and course design, and leading teams of instructional designers and learning technologists to develop online courses and programs. Before that, he taught creative writing courses and composition courses in higher education and worked as a reporter. He has a PhD in Education from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. His dissertation is titled “Exploring the Experiences of Faculty Learning to Teach Online: A Case Study,” and his research interests include student success, faculty development, and engagement in online courses. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in numerous venues, including The Paris Review and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and he is the author of the short story collection, The Fry Pans Aren’t Sufficing.