Biography

Amy Garbrick is the Director of the Office of Learning Design, College of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State at the University Park campus. Amy has managed the design and development of over 100 courses for five award-winning online programs: the Masters of Professional Studies (MPS) in Information Sciences, MPS in Homeland Security, MPS in Enterprise Architecture, BS in IST, and BS in SRA (Security and Risk Analysis). She works on improving teaching and learning in distance, blended, resident, graduate, and undergraduate courses within the College of IST. As the director of Learning Design, she manages a team of six full-time employees and up to 12 part-time employees including student employees.

Previously, Amy was a Senior Instructional Designer and eLearning Coordinator with the Office of Learning Initiatives. Prior to that role, she was an Instructional Designer and eLearning Coordinator with the IST Solutions Institute where she designed and developed courses for corporate partners as well as for the IST undergraduate program. Amy has taught IST 111, IST 302, IST 110S, and IST 110 previously. She taught IST 110 online for over 10 years and and is the only instructor at Penn State who taught in every Penn State LMS Pilot including: D2L, MoodleRooms, Canvas (three separate pilots), Bb (two separate pilots), and Pearson, as well as ANGEL. Prior to her work at IST, she was an Instructional Designer with the Penn State Smeal College of Business R.I.I.T. (Research, Instruction, and Information Technology) Group. She was also a Microcomputer Systems Consultant with the R.I.I.T. Group within Smeal College and worked on solving hardware, OS, software, web, database, and network issues, wearing many "hats" to troubleshoot and solve many technical issues, but primarily working on PCs.

Amy earned a B.S. in Education from Penn State, M.Ed. in Instructional Systems from Penn State, and PhD in Instructional Systems/Learning, Design, and Technology at Penn State. Her research interests include online teaching and learning tools specifically LMS tools, mobile learning, concept maps, and discussion forums. Amy has published research studies and presented at national and international conferences about her work.