Blackboard Exemplary Course Directors
Top Row (Left to Right): Shirley Waterhouse, Maisie Caines, Jan Poston Day; Bottom Row: Jon Mott, Deborah Everhart, Daniel Lake, and David Graf.
Maisie Caines
Maisie Caines is the Faculty Development Specialist at College of the North Atlantic, Newfoundland, Canada. She collaborates with eight other team members in the research, development and demonstration of technology in online learning. Maisie has been teaching online since 1997 and was one of the first Certified WebCT Trainers in Canada. Maisie is one of the principal investigators of the WebCT Exemplary Course Project that has been researching and showcasing best practices in online course design and delivery since 2000. She holds a Master of Arts in Distributed Learning from Royal Roads U, Victoria,British Columbia.
David Graf
Dr. David Graf has been an instructional technologist for over thirty years. During his academic travels he has worn such hats as instructional designer, instructional developer, academic department chair, graduate program director, faculty development director, and technology support director. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Association for Educational Communications & Technology (AECT), the Wisconsin Educational Media Association (WEMA), and the Professional and Organizational Development Network (POD Network). During his tenure at Iowa State University, David provided professional development training for faculty who were involved in distance learning. And, at Valdosta State University, he was instrumental in initiating a training program for faculty starting to work on course development using WebCT. Among his other duties at the Fischler Graduate School of Education at Nova Southeastern University, David is involved in an online course quality project and the development of online training and professional development for adjunct instructors.
Daniel Lake
Daniel Lake is a K-12 technology integration specialist working for the OCM Board of Cooperative Educational Services in Syracuse, NY, where he has trained Central NY educators for the past 24 years. He previously taught Secondary English for 16 years in NY and Alaska, and has also been a graduate-level adjunct instructor in numerous Central NY universities. He is an occasional instructor for the weekend Technology in Education Master's Program at Lesley University. He has presented at numerous State and National conferences, and manages a K-12 Blackboard Academic Suite implementation that presently supporting 23 school districts.
Christie Smith
Christie Smith is the Director of Online Course Development for the Lone Star College System in Houston, Texas. She began teaching in the college system in 1990 and got her first taste of online teaching in 2000. Distance education has always been a passion of hers, and when Lone Star College expanded their department to include instructional designers, Christie knew that was where she needed to be. Although she now directs a team of five instructional designers, she still stays current by teaching online as an adjunct faculty member for one of the system’s five colleges. This is Christie’s second year to serve on the Blackboard ECP board.
Shirley Waterhouse
Dr. Shirley Waterhouse is the Senior Director of the Office of Academic Excellence and Innovation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach Campus, the world's leading institution of higher education in aviation and aerospace. While a fulltime professor in the ERAU Department of Computer Science, Dr. Waterhouse won the outstanding teaching award, bestowed by graduating seniors, eleven out of fourteen semesters. Dr. Waterhouse is also President of eLearnGlobal, a small consulting practice focusing on faculty elearning development and elearning strategic planning. Dr. Waterhouse has authored six books; and the most recent is The Power of eLearning: The Essential Guide for Teaching in the Digital Age, an Allyn & Bacon (Pearson) publication, 2005. For more information on Shirley, visit http://shirleywaterhouse.com
Susan Zvacek
Dr. Susan M. Zvacek is the Director of Instructional Development and Support at the UniversityofKansas. Susan holds a B.A. in Speech from Iowa State University, a Masters in Education from the University of Utah, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instructional Technology, also from IowaStateUniversity. She was a faculty member at the UniversityofNorthern Colorado from 1989 to 1994, where she taught undergraduate teacher education courses and graduate courses in educational technology. She also developed and taught graduate courses at Old Dominion University, where she was the Director of the Center for Learning Technologies, and at NovaSoutheasternUniversity, where she is an adjunct faculty member of the Instructional Technology and Distance Education department. Her scholarly work has been primarily in the field of educational technology, with publications and presentations at national conferences on topics such as faculty development, distance education, and the assessment of learning using online tools. She has spent the past semester on a Fulbright scholarship teaching at Charles University in Prague,Czech Republic, and is a coauthor of Blackboard for Dummies.