Open SUNY Online Teaching Intern: Maree Michaud-Sacks

Maree Michaud-Sacks was a UAlbany CDIT intern during the summer of 2014.  She worked closely with Alejandra Pickett to support the ETAP640 Introduction to Online Teaching course. Following the internship, she continued to work with Open SUNY COTE staff to develop and facilitate New to Online Learning (N2OL) professional development offerings.

Maree is currently an Educational Technologist at University at Albany, where she supports faculty adoption of technology as well as the design and implementation of effective digital learning environments. Prior to her role at University at Albany, Maree  was an Instructional Designer at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences for nine years. She supported faculty through developing creative and innovation instructional solutions to help students engage in the learning process and course material. Maree also has supported technology implementation in K-12 schools and was an instructional designer/project manager who developed corporate eLearning courses that were deployed worldwide to General Electric employees.

Maree holds a M.S. in Curriculum Design and Instructional Technology with a Certificate in Online Learning and Teaching from the University at Albany.  She previously earned a B.S. in Electronic Media, Arts, and Communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and A.S. in Computer Science from Herkimer County Community College.

Working with Alex on teaching ETAP640 was my first experience into teaching online. It was so wonderful to see how the students progressed through the learning materials. As students began to build their online courses, I saw how they slowly gained confidence in their learning through receiving productive feedback as well as participating in metacognitive activities such as reflective blogging. As part of my internship, I analyzed the ETAP640 course, searching for evidence of Cognitive Apprenticeship theory. This experience allowed me to dive deeper into the realm of online teaching, as well as develop an in depth understanding of how a cognitive apprenticeship can be created within an online course.

As a consultant for Open SUNY COTE, I adapted the ETAP640 course as an online faculty development certification program resulting in – New to Online Learning (N2OL) asynchronous facilitated and self-paced offerings. In designing these courses, I used a learner-centered approach to carefully think through how faculty learners would engage and progress through the course materials. Following the design of these offerings, I facilitated the courses to help Open SUNY COTE members at various SUNY institutions learn about online course development and teaching online courses. This teaching experience was extremely rewarding for me. I loved the opportunity to bring faculty and other instructional designers through the course development process and engage them in discussions about teaching online. Both of these experiences truly made me realize my passion for designing and teaching online!