{"id":3616,"date":"2017-02-07T12:51:25","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T18:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/?page_id=3616"},"modified":"2020-06-26T10:31:46","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T16:31:46","slug":"2017ambassador-vanscoy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/engage\/ambassadorprogram\/2017ambassador-vanscoy\/","title":{"rendered":"Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2017 – Buffalo: Amy VanScoy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Amy<\/a>
Amy VanScoy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amy VanScoy<\/strong> is Assistant Professor in the Department of Library\u00a0& Information Studies in the Graduate School of Education at the University\u00a0at Buffalo. She has taught\u00a0online, hybrid, and in-person courses at the\u00a0undergraduate and graduate level. She holds a PhD in information and library\u00a0science from the University of North Carolina\u00a0Chapel Hill and a masters in library\u00a0and information science from the University of Alabama.<\/p>\n

I have been teaching online and\u00a0hybrid courses for future information professionals for the last five years. I\u00a0feel that online teaching challenges us to truly put our teaching\u00a0philosophy\u00a0into practice. Throwing out the clich\u00e9s of the classroom and the three-hour\u00a0lecture forces us to think creatively, to structure our students\u2019 learning\u00a0experience\u00a0toward our real goals and objectives, and to think strategically\u00a0about what will keep a learner motivated through the inevitable challenges of\u00a0learning.<\/em><\/p>\n

Students and instructors\u00a0sometimes approach online learning as a necessity. Students in our program\u00a0often have full-time jobs and family responsibilities that can prevent\u00a0them\u00a0from attending in-person courses and can require them to squeeze their studies\u00a0into lunch breaks and weekend afternoons. But online learning feels to me like\u00a0an\u00a0opportunity. I can cultivate an intimate student-teacher relationship, more\u00a0akin to mentoring than the one-to-many kind of relationship that occurs in the\u00a0traditional\u00a0classroom. Shyness or communication challenges do not prevent\u00a0students from contributing to group activities. And I have more power to curate\u00a0the student\u2019s entire\u00a0learning experience for the course, not the just the three\u00a0hours per week that I would have in an in-person course.<\/em><\/p>\n

Beyond these opportunities, I\u00a0find online teaching invigorating \u2013 the possibilities seem endless for\u00a0exploring new ways of inspiring students and helping them learn. I am\u00a0always on\u00a0the lookout for new technologies and new ideas that I can incorporate into my\u00a0courses. This attitude of experimentation is particularly important to model to\u00a0my students. As future information professionals, they will need to be creative\u00a0and nimble in using technology to design information systems and services and\u00a0to reach\u00a0clients who may not be able to visit a library or information center\u00a0in person. By exploiting online instructional technology, I hope not only to\u00a0facilitate my students\u2019\u00a0learning, but also to help them to become critical\u00a0consumers and creators of online learning.<\/em><\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amy VanScoy is Assistant Professor in the Department of Library\u00a0& Information Studies in the Graduate School of Education at the University\u00a0at Buffalo. She has taught\u00a0online, hybrid, and in-person courses at the\u00a0undergraduate and graduate level. She holds a PhD in information and library\u00a0science from the University of North Carolina\u00a0Chapel Hill and a masters in library\u00a0and information […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"parent":2473,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3616","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3616"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3616"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3888,"href":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3616\/revisions\/3888"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}