SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2026: Alfred State – Ron Good

Ron Good is an experienced educator and instructional designer with more than twenty years in education and professional training. He has designed and taught both face‑to‑face and online courses across a range of disciplines at the collegiate level, as well as in corporate training environments. His academic experience includes teaching at SUNY Binghamton, the University of Pittsburgh, Jamestown Community College, and, for the past five years, Alfred State College.

Throughout his career, Ron has focused on aligning pedagogy, technology, and student needs to create courses that are engaging and rigorous. He brings a strong background in curriculum design, assessment, and learning science to his online teaching and course development. His work reflects a sustained commitment to quality in online education.

As an advocate for effective online teaching, Ron actively contributes to conversations at Alfred State and across SUNY focused on innovations in higher education. He has a demonstrated track record of sharing practical approaches that help faculty leverage online environments to support student success while maintaining the integrity of the discipline.

“Over time, my work in education and Instructional Design has led me to rethink how we talk about online learning. I do not view online education as “distance learning”; it is simply learning. Professional expectations, learning outcomes, and standards of evaluation must remain identical regardless of modality. For example, a nurse enrolled in an online course must master the same content and demonstrate the same competencies as a nurse in a face‑to‑face classroom. The difference lies not in what is learned, but in how learning is supported. This is where the power of well‑designed online learning emerges. When the modality is leveraged intentionally, it enables instructional strategies, such as self-pacing and differentiated learning in ways that are often difficult to achieve in traditional classroom settings. This promotes both rigor and the transfer of knowledge, much like an engaging professor does in a traditional setting.

Ultimately, my goal is to ensure that online learning is not defined by what it lacks or viewed simply as a more convenient modality, but by what it can uniquely enable.”