Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2019: Brockport – Jacqueline Dipzinski

Jackie Dipzinski is a Lecturer for the Department of Public Health and Health Education at the College at Brockport, State University of New York (SUNY).  She earned her Masters in Education 100% online from the University at Buffalo in 2006.  She worked at East Irondequoit Central Schools for 16 years implementing technology and online learning in her health and AVID classes.  In 2018, she made a transition to teach the online graduate program in health education at SUNY Brockport.  She currently teaches online; Foundations of Health, Principals and Philosophy of Health Education, Health Education Curriculum and Design, Assessment and Evaluation in Health Education, Teaching Methods in Health Education, Communication in Health Education, and Health Education Field Experience.

“I believe that the education I provide to students should go beyond the in-depth knowledge but also provide students with the professional skills to succeed outside of the classroom in their future careers.  I designed my online courses to empower critical thinking that is highly engaging, has real world application, is culturally relevant, provides opportunities for professional communications and demonstrates effective pedagogy.  When students are empowered to think critically and apply their critical thinking skills to real world problems, this facilitates their willingness to problem solve, develop professional skills and in-depth knowledge of the content as well as plan, implement and reflect on their learning.  In using a variety of pedagogical techniques to facilitate the knowledge and skills, it is my goal that the graduate students will transition to professional careers within our communities.”

“My pedagogical approach utilizing a variety of strategies that increases collaboration among my students has made an impact on all my courses.  These effective online strategies include but are not limited to technology used in the classroom, journals, Socratic discussion boards, case studies, peer evaluation/assessment, blogs, wiki’s, web design, newsletters, papers, presentations, portfolios and so much more. I currently also utilize standards-based grading rubrics with timely feedback and mastery learning (second submission of work after feedback) which was important to both my students and I. My students rave about how they are allowed to truly learn the in-depth information, can think critically about a topic and develop real-world skills through pre-submission feedback from peers, first submission feedback from the instructor and finally mastery of the knowledge and skills in their final assignment submission. In the future, it is my goal to continue refinement and development of challenging online courses that address real-world health issues and problems with my students.”