Vicki S. Williams, Ph.D.

vqw | at | psu | edu
814-865-6378
www.personal.psu.edu/vqw/blog

I am Manager of Assessment and Evaluation Research at Education Technology Services for Penn State. I find that this is an exciting role with an opportunity to influence the learning of thousands of students. We investigate newer technologies and designs projects that assess the potential of these technologies for improving learning and teaching. As an instructional designer, I learned that the most important activities in the design and development of learning experiences are the needs analysis / front-end analysis and the formative and summative evaluations. It is my role to assess our initiatives and provide feedback to enhance and improve these learning and teaching experiences, as well as to provide the data for data-driven decision-making.

Since I first came to Penn State in 1983, I have had had several incarnations at Penn State. Initially, I left secondary teaching to become a science and math media specialist with what was then Audio Visual Services and was Assistant Director at AVS for ten years, managing the extensive media collection and consulting with faculty on its appropriate use in instruction. While working on my doctorate (starting off in Film & Theory Criticism but switching to Instructional Systems), I served with ETS as a GA in faculty development and then as an instructional designer, designing and developing an early online course in acoustics. After a faculty term teaching instructional design and technologies in a master’s degree program for seven years, I returned to ETS in this new role, focusing on the assessment aspects of instructional design.

I am living proof that people can end up doing something outside their undergraduate education area, but each experience has been a step toward where I am today. My undergraduate degree was in Natural Sciences/Earth & Space Science (where I learned to program in Fortran), and my M.Ed. in Earth Sciences (where I learned to teach). That put me in the classroom and, as science teacher, I got to set up the Apple IIe computers we were given and I taught myself to program in Basic and…and… and… here I am, using computers to assess instructional technology applications for better teaching and learning, or a phrase I use, “teachnology.”
I still love to interact with nature, identify landforms and rock types, and go bird-watching, but I think more critically now, more analytically about things. I am a lifelong learner who loves to travel, married to another lifelong learner who loves to travel. As the quote goes, life is a journey, not a destination and I love to travel and I love this trip.