Speaker: Larry Bouthillier

Larry Bouthillier is the Director of Online Education at the New England Institute of Technology, where he’s helping the college to build online and blended-learning degree programs that are true to its hands-on, experiential learning tradition.

Prior to that, Larry spent 23 years leading educational technology development initiatives at Harvard, including roles as Director of Software Development and Director of Educational Technology.

Larry continues to teach computer science at Harvard, and is a frequent author, teacher and consultant on the effective use and deployment of academic technology, and of digital media in education and the enterprise.


Speaker: Pat Coogan

Pat Coogan currently serves as Assistant Project Manager of Dartmouth’s transition to Canvas. She joined Dartmouth in October, 2012 as a member of the college’s LMS evaluation team. Prior to coming to Dartmouth Pat was an academic affairs administrator responsible for curricular development and evaluation and accreditation. She has taught both online and classroom-based courses in management. Pat earned an M.S. in Education from Syracuse University and an M.B.A. from Boston College.


Speaker: David Demers

David Demers is the Chief Operating Officer of The American Women’s College of Bay Path University since its inception in July, 2013. As COO, he has operational oversight for a new facility housing staff and faculty serving adult online undergraduate students and manages the development of the innovative S.O.U.L. © (Social Online Universal Learning) learning environment. Prior to that appointment, he was the Vice President for Academic and Administrative Technology at Bay Path College from 2009-2013 where he provided strategic vision and oversight of technology resources to support teaching and learning, student information systems, telecommunications and business systems. Demers has focused his career on the effective use of technology to enhance teaching and learning as a research topic and helped develop and deliver online programs at the University of Hartford (1999-2001), the University of Connecticut (2001-2005) and Sacred Heart University where he served as Director of Instructional Technology and Online Learning (2005-2009).

Demers completed his B.S. and Ph.D. at the University of California at Riverside where he pursued research interests in the field of Cell and Molecular Biology.


Speaker: Gieng Du

Gieng Du brings over twenty years of information technology experience in various industries including IT consultant, property management, manufacturing and higher education. He is currently the Director of Product Development of The American Women’s College of Bay Path University since April, 2014. He has developed solutions to enhance S.O.U.L. © (Social Online Universal Learning) learning environment such as Academic Resource Collection system. Prior he was a co-owner of Code-Ace Inc. that provided custom software solutions to businesses. He worked for Aspen Square Management for nine years and lead the development team in enhancing business solutions by integration between various business systems.

Gieng Du has a B.S. of Computer Science from Westfield State University and a Master of Science in Information Systems from Western New England University.


Speaker: Adrienne Phelps-Coco

Adrienne Phelps-Coco is the Senior Instructional Designer at the New England Institute of Technology, where she works one-on-one with faculty to design and build online courses that foster classroom community and promote active and experiential learning by encouraging students to “do something.” She enjoys experimenting with Canvas tools to find new ways to meet the pedagogical goals of faculty members.

Adrienne has taught history and political science at Grand Rapids Community College and is currently completing her PhD in American history at the University of Illinois at Chicago.


Speaker: Jing Qi

Jing Qi joined Dartmouth in April, 2012 as a Learning Management System Specialist. Prior to coming to Dartmouth, she worked as Director of Institution Research for a number of years at two different public institutions. Jing Qi has a B.S. degree in Information Technology and earned her Ed.D in Educational Assessment. As a LMS Specialist, her interest/expertise is to leverage Canvas big data to identify meaningful patterns with user generated data in Canvas to inform students of their performance and course design.


Speaker: Carrie Saarinen

Carrie Saarinen is senior manager of design and development at Canvas Network, a platform where academic institutions can offer open online courses, including MOOCs. Carrie oversees design and implementation, with a focus on ensuring highly engaging and effective learning experiences.

Previously, Carrie was instructional designer and programs coordinator at Brown University in Providence RI where she worked in instructional design, technology projects, and the selection and use of educational platforms and technologies. SInce joining Instructure and Canvas Network, Carrie has been involved with over 200 MOOCs, including “Society, Science, Survival: Lessons from AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead,’” a MOOC centered around themes from the popular television show and facilitated by UC-Irvine.


Speaker: Cosme Salazar

Cosme Salazar is a Product Manager at Instructure where he manages the Admin, SIS, and Communications teams. Before he joined Instructure last year, he was a Senior Product Manager with the Marketplace business at Amazon. Cosme earned his MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with concentrations in strategy and analytic management.


Speaker: Jesse Schreier

Jesse Schreier is an instructional designer at the School of Professional Studies at Brown University. He is a former community college professor of history and is passionate about incorporating technology into education and helping young people achieve their potential. Jesse helped design, build, and facilitate Brown's first MOOC for high school students, entitled Exploring Engineering. Along with Brown Professor of Engineering, Karen Haberstroh, Jesse has run this MOOC on 5 separate occasions using Canvas Network.


Speaker: Peter Testori

Peter Testori currently serves as the Director of the Center for Online and Digital Learning at Bay Path University. He is a graduate of Central Connecticut State University where he earned his master of science in student development/higher education and continued his graduate study in instructional technology design at UMass Boston. Mr. Testori is responsible for the management and oversight of all online courses in the graduate and traditional undergraduate programs at the University. He develops and leads the strategy for innovative, high quality online learning in the traditional undergraduate and graduate programs. He works closely and collaboratively with faculty and program directors to assist in the planning and coordination of the design and delivery of all online courses. He is responsible for fulfilling training and support needs for all faculty teaching online as well as for fulfilling the pedagogical needs of faculty and students in the online environment.


Speaker: Tom Thibodeau

Tom Thibodeau is an Assistant Provost at New England Institute of Technology with primary responsibility for the use of academic technology and the Director of the Faculty Resource Center (FRC). The FRC is tasked with developing and supporting the faculty in their use of academic technology,, online presence in our Canvas LMS and the minimum standards of the Canvas course.

Tom has been at NEIT for 24 years. He started as an adjunct instructor in the video production department and has moved through various teaching and administrative positions.

Tom also teaches the Colleges of Worcester Consortium Certificate in College Teaching Program and in the Anna Maria graduate program in Educational Technology.


Speaker: Amber Vaill

Amber Vaill brings over fifteen years of experience as an educator and over ten years experience in online education to her role as Instructional Designer at Becker College. She has served in various roles in online education in the K-12, higher education, and corporate training environments. Her areas of expertise include designing and facilitating online faculty development programs, creating online student orientations, and developing and teaching online courses. From 2007-2013, Dr. Vaill established and managed online learning course development and support operations at Bay Path College and is currently working with colleagues at Becker College to develop and implement online programs, training and support services for online students and faculty.

Dr. Vaill earned her Ph.D. in Education with an e-Learning specialization from Northcentral University. She also holds an M.Ed. in History Education from Westfield State University and an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instructional Technology from Framingham State University.