Digital Teaching Symposium

Darcy W. Hardy is an award-winning distance and online learning professional who has worked as a higher education administrator, an IPA with the Obama Administration, a board member in state and national associations, and as a contributor in higher education ed tech. Within the field of online learning, she focuses on strategy & vision; organization & governance; policy, process & practice; and quality oversight. She earned her PhD in Curriculum & Instruction (Instructional Technology) from The University of Texas at Austin in 1992.

Catherine R. Barber, Ph.D., is a psychologist with 15 years of experience teaching adult learners in post-secondary and medical education settings. Her expertise in online course design and teaching has led to three awards from the Blackboard Corporation and to a new book from Cambridge University Press, The New Roadmap for Creating Online Courses: An Interactive Workbook (Barber, McCollum, & Maboudian, 2020). Catherine is also an accomplished researcher whose publications include an additional book, book chapters, and over 25 peer-reviewed journal articles on psychological and educational topics. Her research interests include online course design and online teaching, assessment in higher education, and action research on social justice issues in education.

Dr. Lesley Casarez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Angelo State University, where she is also the Director for the Quality Enhancement Plan and the Coordinator for the Master of Science in Professional School Counseling. She serves nationally on the board of Phi Kappa Phi and at the state level for the Texas Counseling Association, the Texas School Counselor Association, and the Texas Career Development Association. She was recently announced as the recipient of the 2020 John R. Bourne Outstanding Online Program Award by the Online Learning Consortium, the 2020 Presidential Award Recipient in Leadership and Service for Angelo State University, and the 2020 Distinguished Young Alumnus for Sul Ross State University. Her accomplishments include numerous scholarly presentations and several publications. Prior to coming to ASU, she worked as a public school counselor and teacher. Dr. Casarez completed her Ph.D. at Texas Tech University and holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, Texas State University, and Sul Ross State University.

Director of Curriculum Development and Testing Services at The University of Toledo. Her responsibilities include developing research-based curriculum that incorporates emerging technologies, evaluating data on newly-created and redeveloped courses, and managing the testing center. Additionally, she is an adjunct instructor in the mathematics department. Claire has won three international awards for development of quality online courses, and she has had four courses successfully certified by Quality Matters. Claire’s research interests include using technology to foster engagement and applying the principles of quality course design.

Based outside of Washington, DC, Monica Hill has been with Blackboard since 2017. As your Blackboard Client Experience Manager, she helps college faculty and staff understand, identify, and use a variety of resources to optimize the value of their current Blackboard products and services. Monica has over two decades of experience in academia as a professor, instructional designer, administrator of online learning, and program evaluator. (See more about Monica’s background on LinkedIn).

Susan Biro serves as Online Learning Coordinator at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where she coordinates initiatives to enhance and expand online course offerings in applied master’s degree programs and badging efforts. In a 20-year career in higher education, Susan has held a variety of academic and administrative leadership posts focused on the execution of distance learning programs. Her areas of expertise include online academic administration, faculty development and mentoring for online/hybrid delivery, online student support, and academic affairs - including accreditation self-study. Susan has helped drive initiatives with institutional visibility and impact, including evaluating Learning Management Systems, scaling online courses and programs, and implementing Open Educational Resources. She has 15+ years’ experience teaching undergraduate and adult learners in all course formats, with a focus on online design and delivery. Susan has delivered more than 30 presentations at academic conferences, holds Peer Reviewer Certification from Quality Matters, and was awarded an Educause Badge for Implementing Universal Design for Learning in Education. Susan earned both her Doctor of Education with a specialization in Leadership in Higher Education, and her Master of Education in Adult Education from Widener University, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Delaware State University.

Collin Sullivan is the Learning Management System Support Specialist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Collin supports the day-to-day operation, administration, and troubleshooting of UMBC’s LMS, Blackboard. His primary responsibilities as LMS Support Specialist also include supporting the campus migration from Blackboard Original to the new Blackboard Ultra, a transition planned to be complete by Fall 2021. Through this transition, he has consulted faculty in redesigning their courses to align with nationally recognized standards and to reconceptualize content, activities, and assessments to promote active learning and student retention. Additionally, Collin is the inaugural administrator of his institution's new Comprehensive Learner Record system. Throughout his undergraduate career at UMBC, Collin served as a student consultant to Instructional Technology, where he helped faculty coordinate the use of clickers in their classrooms, led trainings about supported cloud storage options, and created a campus wide training event centering around the best practices of technology. Collin is currently pursuing his Master of Public Policy degree with a specialization in K-12 and Higher Education policy, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, all from UMBC.

Jacob is the Associate Director of Instructional Technology Support Services for SHSU Online at Sam Houston State University. He leads faculty development efforts for Blackboard Instructors at SHSU. He is a Blackboard Community Leadership Circle member, a Blackboard Certified Trainer, and a self-proclaimed eLearning eVangelist. Jacob has 22 years of experience in the field and loves to connect instructors to methods, strategies, and practices to enhance their digital teaching experience.

Jill is a certified English Language Arts teacher with 15 years of experience teaching at Chartiers Valley Middle School near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is proud to have simultaneously served as a 7th grade ELA teacher, a Curriculum Leader, and a Reading Intervention Specialist, and to have provided disciplinary literacy coaching to content area teachers in her district.

Now working exclusively for Turnitin, Jill is honored to provide a classroom teacher’s perspective on product development and she is thrilled to share research-based best practices in instruction and assessment with teachers all over the world.

For more than 4 years, Patti West-Smith has led Turnitin's Teaching and Learning Innovations team. Before that, Patti spent 19 years working in nearly every capacity in school districts with certifications as teacher, principal, and superintendent while also working on a variety of local, state, and national curriculum and assessment projects. Additionally, Patti served as an adjunct professor at Salisbury University, where she taught in their teacher preparation program, and as an independent professional learning consultant with a number of districts.

Department Chair and an instructor of Mathematics at Beaufort County Community College in Washington, NC. She holds a Doctorate in Educational Leadership and a Master's degree in Mathematics Education from East Carolina University. She has 19 years of teaching experience and is passionate about learning and teaching.

Instructional Technologist and Adjunct Instructor for Stark State College. She has been teaching and developing classes in Computer Science since 2008. She has taught online and in the face-to-face environment. She has developed classes in Web Design, Mobile Development, and Game Design. She is a Certified Peer Reviewer for Quality Matters and a Blackboard Exemplary Course Reviewer. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Instructional Design from Franklin University with a research focus on the impact of Open Education Resources on student success.

Teaching and Learning Consultant (TLC) in the Office of Curriculum and Instructional Support at Central Michigan University (CMU) in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Sarah provides instructional support to educators in implementing effective, evidence-based teaching and learning practices, technologies, and curriculum in all class formats. After earning her Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental biology and Future Professoriate Graduate Certificate from Virginia Tech, Sarah completed postdoctoral research positions at Boston Biomedical Research Institute and Tufts Medical School. In addition to advising and overseeing textbook and web-interface content and instructional resource development for Macmillan Learning, Sarah’s experience also includes curricula and course development, design, implementation, and instruction in multiple modalities, for CMU’s Departments of Biology and Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Virginia Tech’s Department of Biology.

Scott Gumieny is an accounting instructor in the Department of Accounting and Finance at Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In addition to teaching full time, Scott is a lead advisor for Business Professionals of America (BPA), an academic student organization and I run a tax preparation site for Davenport's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program. He’s an active member of the Michigan Association of Public Accountants (MACPA) and the Association of Governmental Accountants (AGA). Scott’s professional background before joining Davenport's accounting and finance faculty team has afforded him the ability to teach many different levels of accounting and taxation.

Instructional designer/adjunct faculty at Stark State College in North Canton, Ohio. She is a Quality Matters certified Peer Reviewer, QM Coordinator, Course Review Manager, and a member of the QM Instructional Designers Association. Patti has taught online for 14 years. She earned a Master of Art in Theology at Ashland Theological Seminary. She taught the New Testament and Theology at Malone University and currently teaches a fully online Ethics course at Stark State College. She has used Blackboard since 2009 and entered the Exemplary Course Program for the first time this year.

Student Learning Coordinator and Adjunct Instructor at Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, FL. Over the years, she has served as the subject matter expert for several course designs and contributed to the creation of a textbook-free Associate’s degree. Victimology is her most recent OER course, and it was her favorite one to create. When Dr. Clay is not working, she can be found hanging out with her two children or writing chapters for her next fiction novel.

Instructor at Angelo State University within the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She serves primarily in the Professional School Counseling online graduate program. Previously, she served as an educator and school counselor in the K-12 public school sector. Ashley is a Counseling and Psychological Studies doctoral candidate at Regent University. Her research interests include crisis and trauma within schools and school counselor education.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Angelo State University. She serves primarily in the Professional School Counseling online graduate program. She has served as a teacher, school counselor, and administrator in public k-12 schools, and she has served ASU for over 7 years in a variety of roles. Her research interests include online teaching and learning and school counselor preparation.

Instructional Designer/Developer, and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in music education, a master’s degree in secondary Education and will complete another master’s degree at the end of December 2020 in Instructional Design. She has been at Gateway Community and Technical College for 15 years working in online learning and now works as an instructional designer. Her forte is working with faculty to transform face-to-face courses into the online platform. Karen says, “I enjoy the challenge of taking a course or training project and designing it so it will be a quality online course experience for students. The only way I can do that is by consulting with faculty and finding out what they consider important for the student to be able to learn and do in the online environment.”

As a Senior Client Experience Manager with Blackboard, Lisa Clark currently supports faculty and administrative staff in higher education to promote the successful adoption of educational technology and implementation of distance education initiatives. She has previously served as a faculty member, course developer, and a senior director of Instructional Technology. Lisa is currently a doctoral candidate (ABD), a published researcher and regular presenter at professional conferences on distance learning.

Wade is a Director of Product Management that eats, sleeps and breaths Blackboard Learn Ultra. Between his embroidered Ultra pillows and his Ultra pancake breakfast, he loves to talk to clients about Learn Ultra so that he can have a deep understanding on how to make it better. He lives with an Ultra awesome family that includes three Ultra dogs, three Ultra cats, two Ultra great kids and an Ultra partridge in an Ultra pear tree. Ultra.

Caroline brings deep and wide-ranging educational expertise, fresh thinking, creativity and experience to institutions facing complex pedagogical and technological change. Based in Australia, Caroline works with institutions and corporations globally to re-imagine, re-frame and re-design learning and education to fit with the future needs of educators, learners, industries and organizations. She also teaches a course on ‘getting started with learning analytics’ for educators that she developed for the Blackboard Academy. Caroline was President of ASCILITE (Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education), Director of Digital Learning at La Trobe University and an expert academic in digital learning at the University of Queensland - where she is an adjunct Associate Professor. Caroline holds a PhD on the interrelationship between teacher beliefs and their digital teaching practices, as well as a master’s degree and a Graduate Diploma of Adult and Vocational Education.