Erica C. Fleming

Assistant Director of Teaching and Learning
Penn State College of IST

Faculty Workshops

In my current role, I assist with IST New Faculty Orientation, monthly teaching conversations, and work with First-Year Seminar instructors to ensure our students start their Penn State journey successfully.

In my previous role as an instructional designer at Teaching and Learning with Technology, I designed, developed, and facilitated faculty-focused professional development opportunities that emphasize advancing student learning while taking advantage of current and emerging technologies. Some of my faculty engagements included BlendLT, the Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology, the Engaging Students Series, and creating new opportunities to help students move toward digital fluency. I have also presented sessions for the university-wide new faculty orientation (NFO) seminar series.

Additionally, I turn faculty development artifacts into open education resources (OER). This was particularly important during the rapid transition to remote teaching in Spring 2020. Our resources from the Engaging Students Series were publicly available as the ESS Pressbook for faculty to review. They also have a Creative Commons license so that other faculty developers can use or adapt resources without duplicating efforts.

Erica presenting at the BlendDLA Workshop

Faculty Feedback

“I attended most, if not all, of the Engaging Students series last year after the onset of Covid and they were extremely helpful. Lately I have been going back through them to see what else I might pick out to adapt going forward. I have to tell you, even though I missed attending the first session due to our network issues I found the recap [on the ESS Pressbook] almost every bit as good as the sessions I attended. You and your team really put together a super program and access to go back and review it now, almost a year later, is just wonderful. And I am finding a few additional nuggets in these and other recordings. Considering how much everything was so up in the air back then the series was laid out so well and just so helpful.”
Faculty Participant
Engaging Students Series

“Erica was made every effort to individualize the course for my unusual teaching circumstance. She never imposed on my existing plans, materials, or strategies, but graciously and helpfully made significant improvements to my course…I have so many jobs for her! Can she work her magic with my other non-blended courses?”
Faculty Participant
BlendLT

“Thank you all for an interesting, informative, and engaging session today on the syllabus and assessment. You shared so many innovative ideas and resources with the faculty who attended. I really appreciate all of the hard work that went into this and your careful attention to the needs and concerns of new faculty.”
PSU Administrator
New Faculty Orientation Workshop

Workshop Example

This is a session from the Engaging Students Series (ESS) on “Engaging Students Synchronously.” I co-authored and co-presented this session, and was the lead developer on the series as a whole. Since April 2020, we facilitated more than 38 sessions of the ESS on 18 topics, with more than 1,700 faculty participants.