Leveraging Engagement for Addressing Educator Burnout
Brief Abstract
According to a recent study by Alchemy (FKA O'Donnell Learn), 50% of faculty express feeling burnt out. In this session, we will dive into this topic (i.e. burnout) and explore the potentialities of engagement as both a mechanism to explore educator burnout, but also a tool to address it.
Please join us for the special session, located in Presidential Chamber B, during the Engagement Block Party.
Presenters
Pronouns: she, her, hers
Twitter: @MaddieShellgren
As the Director of Online Engagement, Madeline (Maddie) Shellgren serves as the lead innovator, designer, and project manager of the OLC's portfolio of online engagement opportunities. Known for her love of storytelling, play, and all things gameful, Maddie thrives on facilitating and designing meaningful ways for people to connect, learn, and grow together. Within the OLC, she has served on steering and operations committees for several of the organization’s conferences (including as Technology Test Kitchen and Innovation Studio lead, as well as Engagement Co-Chair) and has had the distinct honor of being the mastermind behind the OLC Escape Rooms. She looks forward to continuing supporting OLC community building efforts, is committed to sustainable, equitable, and anti-oppressive ecologies within education, and is genuinely excited to leverage her interdisciplinary scholarly and professional backgrounds as she helps lead the OLC towards truly innovative and transformative models for what’s possible for online and digital engagement. Maddie joins the OLC from Michigan State University (MSU), where she has served as the lead on numerous student success initiatives related to instructional design and technology, accessibility, and equity and inclusion. Over the past eleven years, Maddie has dedicated her professional life to teaching and learning related initiatives and has strategically sought out opportunities that give her a multi-dimensional perspective on teaching and learning, including working as a Standardized Patient training medical students, serving as Program Director for Teaching Assistant development, taking lead on a number of cross-institutional educator onboarding and professional development projects, and teaching across online and face-to-face contexts. She most recently worked as an Assistant Rowing Coach for the MSU Varsity Women’s Rowing Program. There she was given the opportunity to help redesign a community from the bottom up, story the team's new journey together in fun and multimodal ways, lead in the co-construction of community expectations and norms, help ensure alignment across a variety of stakeholders and initiatives, and develop and operationalize strategic structures for long-term sustainability (such as entirely new social media, marketing, communications, and content management strategies). She had the privilege of seeing the impact of her human-centered and equity-oriented approach each and every day as the team reimagined what it meant to be a Spartan on the MSU Rowing Team. With her move to the OLC, she will continue on as a volunteer coach, still supporting these efforts and the team, and is excited to get back on the water.
Brett (he/him/his) has worked in higher education for over 25 years, with extensive experience leading teaching effectiveness and student success initiatives involving a myriad of stakeholders at campus, system, and national levels. Many of these efforts have included curricular redesign for more innovative and effective uses of technology, including quality online-blended course design and delivery. In his role at Alchemy, Brett has led the development and implementation of our Purposeful Learning Framework, which enables the creation of student-centric learning experiences that are humanized, inclusive, and engaging.
Since earning his doctorate in Curriculum & Instruction in 1997, he has applied his knowledge and passion to become an established teacher, researcher, and thought leader on many topics in contemporary education. These range from sound fundamentals of effective course design and delivery to more innovative practices and uses of technology to provide greater access, engagement, and real-world application. In particular, Brett is known as an expert in applying Universal Design for Learning in post-secondary education as a means for greater equity, accessibility, and inclusivity. He has led many faculty and institutional efforts to apply the principles of UDL in ways to enable success by the greatest number and diversity of students possible. As a first generation college student himself, Brett is particularly invested in closing equity gaps that exist in postsecondary education. He works and resides in Olympia, Washington, on the ancestral lands of the Medicine Creek Treaty tribes. As a resident of the Pacific Northwest, Brett enjoys all the scenic beauty and recreation the area has to offer and spends a great deal of time on regional trail and water pursuits.
Extended Abstract