Speaker: Miriam Cope, PhD

Miriam holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are cultural geographies of agriculture, urban water management, and public participation. Prior to graduate school, Miriam worked as Director of the Center for GIS Research at Cal Poly Pomona.


Speaker: Elizabeth Dalton

Elizabeth is the Learning Management System Administrator for Granite State College, a public institution in New Hampshire specializing in adult higher education, where she has also worked as an instructional designer and as an undergraduate statistics instructor. She holds a B.A. in Linguistics and an Ed.M. in Educational Media and Technology, and is completing a Ph.D. in Education at the University of New Hampshire focusing on the use of learning analytics and other data to understand and improve the teaching and learning processes. She emphasizes the importance of combining sound analysis of data with a humanist appreciation for the social and constructivist nature of teaching and learning, while remaining mindful of the ethical uses and mis-uses to which "big data" can be put.


Speaker: Alexandra Deschamps

Alex Deschamps is an Instructional Designer and Faculty Support Coordinator for UMass Amherst. As part of UMass IT Services and Academic Computing, she oversees the Instructional Media Lab; the University’s front-line support for instructional technology use by faculty, lecturers, and teaching assistants. Alex has a Master’s degree in Education with a focus on math, science, and learning technologies. Alex and the Instructional Media Lab played an integral part in transitioning the campus from Blackboard Vista to Moodle.


Speaker: Michael Jacobs

Michael Jacobs is an Economics teacher at Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, NH. He is in his 15th year of teaching. After eight years of teaching math, he made the transition to Economics, and Moodle has been a key element in the design and delivery of his curriculum. He helped pilot Brewster’s transition to the learning management system in 2011. Since that time, he has helped design and implement faculty training sessions for topics that include:
• Using the Quiz Module
• Importing Questions into the Quiz Module
• Using the Lesson Module
• Embedding multimedia into Moodle
• Groups and groupings
• Using the Forum Module
• Analyzing student data in the Quiz Module
• Turnitin.com
• Grading Rubrics, and Marking Guides...

In 2013, he was honored with the Brewster Academy “Excellence in Teaching Award.” He is currently working on a Master’s degree from the Dartmouth College MALS program. His emphasis of study has been Globalization, and he is in the process of completing his thesis on intellectual property protection.


Speaker: Deb Sarlin

Deb has taught with one foot in a computer science department while the other was moored in education, and in two fine arts departments as well. After serving at a number of colleges, she has found a happy home in the Brandeis Library. As part of the Center for Teaching & Learning and a member of the collaborative Library Academic and Research Computing (LARC) team, Deb works with faculty on innovative course designs and on instructional projects emerging from the Brandeis MakerLab using 3D printers, scanners, and software for projection mapping, physical or online exhibits.


Speaker: Jason Simms, Ph.D.

Jason L. Simms is Academic Computing Manager for the Social Sciences at Wesleyan University, where he also holds a research affiliation with the Department of Anthropology. He received his B.A. in Classics and M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He went on to earn his M.P.H. in Environmental Health, a graduate certificate in Geographical Information Systems, and a Ph.D. in Applied Anthropology from the University of South Florida. While there, as a Graduate Multidisciplinary Fellow he researched water, health, and sanitation in developing regions, conducting fieldwork in the Dominican Republic before shifting focus to the political economy of water in industrialized agricultural contexts. Concurrently, he spent several years researching ways in which hurricanes and technological hazards affect vulnerable populations. His ongoing research interests include the political economy of the environment, qualitative and quantitative research methods and design, spatial statistics and analyses, and natural hazards.