Throughout my nearly twenty-five years as an innovator in the use of technology in teaching, I have actively shared what I have learned with fellow faculty. After receiving a Project Mentor award at Mount Royal College to help other faculty use technology effectively in their teaching, I continued to mentor faculty at the University of Vermont. At UVM’s Center for Teaching and Learning, I helped lead faculty workshops on using learning management systems, on teaching online, and on employing podcasting and blogging in the classroom. I also co-taught a multi-week online course for faculty on “Teaching Effectively Online.” As Faculty Development Coordinator at MacEwan University and as the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Marquette University, I collaborated with faculty and fellow staff to help promote and model technology-enhanced teaching. Mentoring faculty in the effective use of technology in the classroom has been an invaluable component to my own evolution as a teacher and educational developer. It also connects deeply with my own interests in pedagogy, online learning, and the future of higher education in North America.

My move into Open Learning in 2019 allowed me to delve more deeply into online course development and digital pedagogy, but also to help support and promote the use and creation of Open Educational Resources. Having created OERs in the 1990s that went on to be used by students and faculty around the world and having developed and taught online courses at the University of Vermont, my work in Open Learning has allowed me to return to an area of teaching and curriculum development about which I am passionate.

Here are the slides to several recent presentations I have given on this topic:

“The Last Best West: Lessons from the Pioneer Days of Teaching (and Selling) the Literatures of Canada Online.”  2013 Annual Meeting of the Association of Canadian and Québécois Literatures. University of Victoria. June 1-4, 2013. (SLIDES PDF)

“Surfing the Waves of Disruption: faculty development in the age of the open, online course.” On the Verge: Debating the Future of University Teaching. Seventh Annual Conference on Teaching and Learning. University of Windsor. May 1-2, 2013. (SLIDES PDF)

“Open(ing) Access: Twitter, social media, and your life as a teacher and scholar.”  Faculty Development Day, August 28, 2012 (SLIDES PDF)