SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2021: Fredonia – Dani McMay

Dani McMay, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Dr. McMay is one of the first researchers to publish about using podcasts to improve learning outcomes in the classroom with her paper iTunes University and the Classroom: Can Podcasts Replace Professors? published in Computers & Education in 2009. She started teaching courses online during the intersessions in 2007 as a way to provide extra opportunities for students to either get ahead or catch up on course work for their degree. During that time, she has taught on various LMS platforms (starting on Lotus Notes and moving to ANGEL and now using Moodle), and increased the use of videos and external apps (e.g., Flipgrid, Kahoot, VoiceThread) to help engage students and create a better learning community in the online space. Most commonly, she teaches Foundations of Psychology and Cognitive Psychology online, but is working on developing several new courses to be offered as an online option at least once per year. Prior to coming to Fredonia, Dr. McMay earned her doctorate in Psychology (emphasis in Cognitive and Neurosciences) from the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL

The pandemic has forced many students to try online and remote learning, but I believe there is a huge difference between a course forced online because of a global health crisis and a course that was designed to be taught online from its inception.