Southwestern Magazine | Spring 2021

A STEEP LEARNING CURVE To support the faculty during the transition to remote learning that began in March 2020, Julie Sievers P'19, director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship, partnered closely with Melanie Hoag, instructional technologist, to create myriad programs and resources, including robust websites, numerous pedagogy workshops, and a guide for students on how to use educational technology. The dynamic duo have had to build that impressive array of training sessions and resources from scratch while also responding to faculty SOSes—formidable tasks that have demanded many long hours each day for the past 14 months. “It’s been challenging,” admits Sievers. “I aim to keep up with current and emerging pedagogies and the research about them. That includes having some familiarity with digital pedagogies, and I do experiment with digital tools quite a bit in my own teaching. But educational technology is still not my primary area of focus or expertise, so helping lead our pivot to remote teaching has required me to rapidly learn about a variety of teaching approaches and tools.” A further hurdle was scaling up high-quality support quickly while knowing somany faculty would need help. Luckily, she was able to collaborate with Hoag, who specializes in instructional technology. “She’s been amazing,” says Sievers. Sievers and Hoag initially assembled an ad hoc ed-tech team that included Hal Hoeppner, an institutional research analyst; Kelly Lessard, Susie Bullock, Kat Garza, and Laura Polanco, all faculty administrative assistants from across campus; librarians Theresa Zelasko and Katherine Hooker; and student assistants who worked for Hoag last spring. Even though the team had little prior experience with educational technology, Sievers says, they learned on the fly during those hectic weeks last March. “They were incredibly helpful, and we could not have kept on top of the workflow without them,” she adds gratefully. After those frenetic weeks at the end of March, the faculty administrative assistants and librarians returned to their “day jobs,” providing support to professors but through their normal positions instead of with an ed-tech focus. The student assistants left for the summer, but Hoeppner and Lessard stayed on to assist through the fall 2020 semester. Meanwhile, Sievers and Hoag met frequently with fellow members of the Campus Readiness Task Force’s instruction subcommittee, which included Daryl Tschoepe, Randy Avenell, and Todd Watson from information technology; Alisa Gaunder, Julie Cowley, and Kendall Richards from the dean’s office; and kinesiology professor Scott McLean. Together, they worked to determine the best way to deliver instruction during COVID-19. Sievers and Hoag also continued to design workshops for faculty during the summer and fall, and throughout the 2020–2021 academic year, Hoag has been fielding faculty requests about instructional technology while Sievers addresses their inquiries about best pedagogical practices. “It has been and continues to be quite a journey, ranging from challenging to exciting to overwhelming to thankful!” Hoag shares. “I could not have a better partner than Julie, working together in collaboration to provide the resources to best equip our faculty to quickly move their teaching, class materials, and interactions with their students online. . . . It's been amazing what our faculty, students, and the staff who support them have done and continue to do.” Associate Professor of Psychology Erin Crockett ’05 expresses a deep appreciation for Sievers and Hoag, especially considering she had never taught online before. “They did a really fantastic, amazing job, and I could not envision teaching myself these things without them,” she shares. STORY BY MEILEE BRIDGES SOUTHWE S T E RN | 2 3