Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2017 – Fredonia: Susan Spangler

Susan Spangler is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Fredonia State University of New York.  Before earning her Ph.D. in English Studies from Illinois State University, she taught secondary English for sixteen years in Illinois.

Dr. Spangler’s teaching interests include English Adolescence Education, grammar, writing, and graphic literature, and she has published recent articles on flipped writing assessment.  She is currently researching how transparency in teaching and assessment benefits both students and course instructors.

Teaching online began for Dr. Spangler eight years ago when she wanted to offer summer courses in her specialized area of literature.  Over the years, her passion for teaching online has grown, so much so that she is pursuing a certificate in Instructional Design from the Online Learning Consortium.  She is also an active member of Fredonia’s committee for Open SUNY’s Institutional Readiness process.  She hopes to help expand Fredonia’s offerings to Open SUNY and help develop the university’s first fully online program.

I see online courses as a natural extension of teaching and learning for today’s tech-savvy students.  Students are already proficient in the educational technology tools that I’m using in my courses, and if they’re not, they have the ability to almost instantly become competent users of that technology.  If we don’t capitalize on the technology and the modes of communication students use daily, we are missing out on an opportunity to develop the whole student.