Teaching Philosophy:

 

As an educator and instructional designer, I believe in creating an exciting, challenging, and rewarding learning environment for my classes.  I spend a lot of time developing my courses and have continued to modify and update them each semester. I encourage student and peer feedback on my courses as there is always room for improvement.  I am in constant contact with professionals in the K-12 and corporate environments. This helps keep my course materials and assignments applicable to the realities students will face when they graduate. I also actively read current educational literature in order to keep pace with advanced technologies and instructional strategies being used to support learning.

I have designed both online and face-to-face courses. In both settings, I plan activities that engage the students and help promote meaningful learning experiences. In my online classes I take advantage of the interactive environment and use technologies such as blogs, podcasts, wikis, videos, google docs, and chat sessions.  In my face-to-face classes I encourage group discussion, learning activities, projects, group work, and online interactions.  While not every course I teach encompasses all of these methods, they are used when applicable.  I firmly believe that a student’s learning experience must be fun, challenging, and meaningful. I strive to promote these characteristics in all of my courses to ensure that learning is exciting each semester.  Thus far I have received positive feedback in all of my courses at Penn State University. This is demonstrated on the Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness scores that I receive each semester, which has averaged 6.2 out of 7.

 

Teaching Interests:

 

I have extensive instructional design and technology experience and have taught courses on instructional design theory, application, and use in both corporate and academic settings. I have a substantial amount of multimedia development and technology integration experience.  Furthermore, I have designed both online and face-to-face courses for both Penn State University and the University of Phoenix online.

Throughout my doctoral studies at Penn State University I had the opportunity to teach several face-to-face and online courses to both undergraduate and graduate students. I am currently teaching a course for Penn State “EDTEC 440: Introduction to Computers for Educators”, which is geared towards technology integration in the K-12 classroom.  In the past, I have taught courses on multimedia design using software such as Adobe Flash, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. I have utilized instructional design theories in my classes and have taught students how conduct a needs analysis, write learning objectives, design instruction and assessments, and work through instructional design models.  My Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness at Penn State has consistently averaged 6.2 out of 7.

In addition to teaching at Penn State, I am currently a faculty member at the University of Phoenix online in the department of Information, Sciences, and Technology.  I have taught over 30 courses online for the University of Phoenix as well as participated in a 5-week training course on teaching and classroom management in an online environment.  I have taught courses on various topics such as technology integration in business and classroom settings as well as multimedia design and development. Additionally, I have taught courses on the following computer technologies: Adobe Flash, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, Video, Audio, PowerPoint, and Web 2.0.  My average student rating of teacher effectiveness at the University of Phoenix is 93% out of 100%.

 

 

 

---