SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2025: Empire – Diane Shichtman

Diane Shichtman, Ph.D. is a member of the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Empire State University, currently serving as an Academic Coordinator. She has taught online courses for most of her time with Empire, and in the 2024-2025 academic year is also the Center for Teaching and Learning’s AI Fellow. Dr. Shichtman has a robust interdisciplinary background, holding a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MBA from the University at Albany, and an M.A. from the Program in Media Studies from the New School for Social Research. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and was an IT consultant and an award-winning Oracle-approved instructor. Her scholarship, such as “Using the Pandemic as a Case Study: Teaching Social and Ethical Issues,” reflects her commitment to integrating real-world challenges into the curriculum. She has also contributed to thinking about the intersection of education, digital tools, and the world of work, as seen in her presentations on technical communication, project management, and digital humanities.

I value the flexibility, accessibility, and opportunity for education that online courses offer our students. Our students face numerous challenges, and I want their courses to be positive experiences.

One of the things I try to do is get my students to engage with each other in productive, meaningful ways. Online discussions give students the opportunity to explore ideas, see things from other points of view, and learn how to more effectively communicate their own ideas. I promote this by designing discussion starters that are open-ended and engage with the students, helping them think about the questions. In their final reflections, some of my students comment about how much they learn from discussions, seeing through other people’s eyes the ideas they are exploring.

I am interested in the design of courses from the perspective of both students and instructors. In my role as Academic Coordinator, I am responsible for the adjunct-ready online course masters, and this leads me to explore evidence-based teaching methods and consider how to design courses that make sense to instructors with a range of teaching styles. Courses must contain the core material, but I also want there to be places where instructors can make their own contributions. Teaching in a world of constant change, I am very conscious of the need to design courses that focus on the core material, are adaptable on the fly, and can be maintained and updated.

My current focus is on developing AI literacy resources. I want students to understand not only how to use GenAI, but also how to use it appropriately and add value to their work beyond what the GenAI tools provide, be aware of implementations of artificial intelligence other than GenAI, and think about AI-infused environments and the ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence.

A quality online learning experience is important to our students, and well-designed courses with solid instructor engagement are crucial to its delivery.