Students in the Doctoral Program

After earning my Master’s in Industrial/Organizational Psychology in 1994, I worked in human resources but desired a career in higher education.  Nine years after I started teaching, I am grateful to finally pursue a PhD encompassing my main interests: psychology, education and technology.  I am intrigued by the potential for the teacher-student relationship to elevate student satisfaction and ultimately, student achievement.  I am currently researching online students’ perception of connectedness and quality of interactions with instructors  as predictors of student satisfaction and matriculation.

My current position as a high school teacher has provided insights into the role of technology in teaching and learning in today's society. These were channeled early in my teaching career through completion of the Master's in Educational Technology program. Upon the close of my 5th year as a classroom teacher, the pull toward a greater understanding of the interplay between teaching, learning, and technology led me to EPET. My research interests focus on online collaborative environments and their impact on student learning and achievement. My hope is that the learning, research, and experience through the EPET program facilitates a direct extension of theory into practice.

I currently serve as the Director of Technology and Assessment in a K-8 school district. I believe that technology, when purposefully and thoughtfully implemented, has a profound impact far beyond basic achievement measures and the EPET program will help deepen my understanding about how to achieve this goal. My research interests include how technology can change teacher-centered, content-directed environments with passive learners into active learning centers where students are highly motivated, self-regulated, and engaged through choice and ownership of the content.

After a decade of teaching English in rural Idaho, the life of educational researcher beckoned: while enhancing my own teaching is paramount, the opportunity to participate in the current dialogue surrounding pedagogical practices entices as well. My research interests include the effects of new technologies on the composing processes of K-12 learners. Specifically, my research focuses on the interactive effects between pedagogy, composition processes, and digital writing environments on student motivation and cognitive performance.

As a community college instructional designer with extensive teaching experience, I am interested in learning environments that foster flow, play and transformative across all age groups. Connecting real-world complexity to classroom teaching and learning via curriculum design and technology greatly interests me, particularly regarding current concerns such as sustainable building and renewable energy. I look forward to the challenge of not only researching possible solutions, but to learning new ways to communicate these solutions.

I come from Lebanon with a B.A. in Psychology and a Teaching Diploma in Special Education. However, my experiences as an undergraduate sparked my interest in multimedia learning. I am interested in investigating how to decrease the cognitive load and increase the engagement of students attending multimedia-based university lectures. Ultimately, I hope my work will contribute to the greater field of teaching and instruction and help students leave the classroom with a new-found interest in the material and having understood and retained as much of it as possible.

I come to Michigan State with a science teaching background. My research interest is how experiential learning affects motivation in science. I am happy to be a part of the great community of educational researchers at MSU. I look forward to challenging myself to expand my research interests and to grow as an educator.

My enthusiasm for educational research brought me to the EPET program at MSU after a few years of teaching at a university in Taipei, Taiwan. My prior teaching experience gave me the unquenchable urge to participate in ongoing discussion surrounding issues of how technology, pedagogy, and content can be best incorporated to induce optimal learning. My research interests are how serious game mechanisms and effects influence learning in formal/informal contexts, how e-learning provides students with opportunities for self-directed exploratory learning, and using video analysis to improve teaching practices in the classroom.

Based on my experience as a teacher and teacher educator, I am wondering about the ways in which social networks impact teacher learning and practice. I would like to explore the ways in which online collaborative environments can expand professional learning communities, creating a better model for sustained, personalized professional development. After teaching for 14 years in Michigan's rural Upper Peninsula in the field of special education, my growing interest in technology and learning led me to this program at MSU. My hope is to immerse myself in an environment rich in research, theory and practice. Fortunately wonderful changes in my life have afforded me this opportunity. I am certainly enjoying the journey.

I have been working for the last several years developing technology for online and blended learning environments at Michigan State University. I am looking forward to examining online and blended learning environments to better understand how technology can be used to enhance learning and development. I came into this program after completing my Master's degree in Educational Technology, where my interest in researching educational technology was coupled with my passion for technology. The Educational Psychology and Educational Technology program feels to be a wonderful place for me to grow and continually challenge myself, both as a professional and as a person.

Having received both my BA and MA from universities in Istanbul and Ankara (Turkey) on applied linguistics, my personal interest in educational technologies started during my undergraduate education and gained momentum with my master's thesis. My research interests include, but are not limited to, serious gaming (specifically in language teaching), distance education theories and their practical applications, educational policy and comparative international education research.

I come from Taiwan, and was a middle school teacher for several years. What brought me to MSU is a passion for educational research and cognition. Before coming to MSU, I have researched creativity, personality, and language learning. I am now interested in the developmental process of similarity, analogy, grouping, and abstraction, especially on the connection between children's language development and spatial thinking.

I came to Michigan State University with ten years of teaching and educational leadership experiences in both public and private schools in Canada. For most of my teaching career, I taught French as a second language.  I strongly considered a PhD in second language pedagogy, but this program has allowed me to engage with ideas at the nexus of my three main interests:  cognitive development, language learning and technology.  Currently, I’m thinking about the relationships between higher order executive functions and online reading comprehension, particularly for teenagers. In the long term, I hope my work will inform the development of new literacies curricula and teaching practice.

My research interests involve learning and motivation in context. In particular, I am interested in the theory and practice of online learning, and in the development of new schemas and conceptual models for teaching, learning and best practices in this unique environment. I am currently preparing to conduct research that will examine cognitive, social, and teacher presence in online versus face-to-face classrooms, and how these variables mediate student motivation and learning across the two settings.

I have a background in human development, specifically in transitional stages with an emphasis on adolescence. I also have experience in informational technology including media production, instructional technology, and desktop support. Thus, my research interests lie at the intersection of these two domains of inquiry which involves the interaction between development and technology. Specifically, I am interested in how the ever-increasing use of technology is changing foundational developmental elements such as cognition and psychosocial maturity.

I came to Michigan State University with a degree in psychology and work experience in a clinic for children with developmental disabilities. My research interest, however, comes from a more personal place. My background as the child of immigrants and my exposure to other students with similar stories sparked my desire to study the children of immigration in theUnited States. I am particularly interested in the parent-child relationship that has been shown to be critical to these students’ academic achievement. Since becoming a part of the Educational Psychology & Educational Technology program at MSU, I have witnessed my development as a scholar in the field and an educator, and I look forward to the rest of this graduate school ride.

I came to MSU because it perfectly fulfilled my desires for a highly ranked program with top notch faculty members who made me feel very comfortable and excited about the future of education. I am studying the motivation of elementary school students to see if there is something teachers and parents can do differently that could keep student motivation from declining as schooling progresses.

After teaching middle school English as a Second Language and Technology Applications as part of the Teach for America program, I came to Michigan State to develop my interests in the intersection of teaching, technology and social equity. I am particularly interested in the ways that educational technologies may challenge and/or perpetuate socio-economic disparities. My time in the program has helped me to both broaden and deepen my knowledge in these individual fields and given me opportunities to develop and pursue my own research questions central to my specific interests.