Contributors

Alyssa Bradley

Mrs. Bradley is the Media Production Specialist at Michigan State University, where her team collaborates with faculty, staff, and students to create video content for MSU events and curriculum. In addition to consulting with clients, producing video, and managing projects, she also provides training to members of the community who want to learn more about creating their own video content.

Kevin Henley

Kevin V. Henley is an Instructional Designer and Accessibility Specialist with over 22 years of experience working in IT and Educational Technology at MSU. He currently works as a member of the MSU IT Digital Experience (DigitalX) team specializing in accessibility and educational technology. Kevin graduated from the U.S. Naval Nuclear Power Program as a Reactor Operator and nuclear qualified Electronics Technician, attended MSU earning both a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Humanities and a Master of Arts in Media & Technology with a focus in Design Research and Serious Game design.

Camisha McClair

A native Michigander, Camisha did her undergrad at Michigan State University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Media Production. After leaving her position as a Videographer and Editor at MSU IT shortly after graduating in December 2019, she got a position at Lansing’s Fox 47 News as a Commercial Production Technician. She is now the weekend News Producer for the newly launched in-house Fox 47 News product.

Nick Noel

Nick is an Instructional Designer, tha Manager of the Instructional Technology and Development Team within MSU IT. He works to develop courses, and trains students and instructors on technolgoy supported by MSU. He is a graduate of MSU's College of Education MAET program, the Serious Games Certificate from MSU's College of Communication Arts and Sciences. 

Liz Owens-Boltz

Liz Owens Boltz is an assistant professor and co-director of the Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program at Michigan State University. The MAET program supports educators as they integrate technology creatively and purposefully in their teaching and learning. Liz has been teaching in online, hybrid, and overseas formats for 7 years, and has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology from MSU. Her research centers around learning with videogames.

Maddie Shellgren

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. One of the things she loves most about her role is the community building efforts and having space to build around her commitment to sustainable, equitable, and anti-oppressive ecologies within education. She is excited every day 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. 

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. 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 continues on as a volunteer coach, still supporting these efforts and the team, and is excited to be back on the water.

Stephen Thomas

Stephen Thomas is a faculty member and the Associate Director for the Center for Integrative Studies in General Science at Michigan State University. He also serves as the Digital Curriculum Coordinator for the College of Natural Science. For his bachelor’s degree from Denison University, he majored in Biology and minored in Art. This interest in the science/art intersection continued into graduate school as he freelanced as a biological illustrator while earning his masters and Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in Organismal and Evolutionary Biology and Entomology. Since coming to MSU, his focus has shifted from the virulence of fungal pathogens of gypsy moths to visual communication of science in formal and informal settings and the use of technology in teaching.

Stephen has worked on projects such as the use of comics to reduce subject anxiety in non-major science courses, the development of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to teach general science, and augmented reality and kiosk games to engage visitors in science museums. One of his more recent projects, Drawing to Learn Biology, is looking at how to foster community-generated visual curriculum for science instruction.

Stephen has developed and/or taught ten courses at MSU (5 completely online, 2 hybrid, and 3 face-to-face), and has worked as a freelance curriculum developer for various publishers. When not working online, he plays the banjo, knits random things, and draws comics…not necessarily in that order.