UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence’s faculty consultants collaborate with all Penn State instructors to use effective teaching methods, engage all students in inclusive and equitable learning environments, and effectively assess students’ learning.
Mary Ann Tobin, associate research professor and instructional consultant, joined the Schreyer Insitute for Teaching Excellence in December 2016 as a faculty consultant after serving as the Director of Teaching and Learning at Triton College, a community college near Chicago. In her role at Triton she oversaw the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) and the Office of Curriculum and Assessment (C&A), where she focused on supporting faculty in offering engaging, diverse, equitable, inclusive and accessible learning opportunities. At Triton, said Tobin, “students spoke 26 different languages, had varying levels of preparation for college, worked more than 30 hours a week on average, and had child- and sometimes eldercare responsibilities.”
As a faculty consultant at the Schreyer Insitute, Tobin has been able to delve more deeply into Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework that includes specific, intentional ways to apply equitable, inclusive and accessible teaching approaches. The goal of UDL is to remove as many barriers to students’ learning as possible, so they have a better chance of academic success. The connection to the UDL framework is personal for Tobin, she said.
“This framework really speaks to me as a former adult student from a low socioeconomic background who faced and overcame a number of barriers along my own academic pathway,” she said. “I want to do whatever I can to help others to learn more deeply, more effectively, and more efficiently ... I’m proud of the work I’ve done with the UDL Team to bring awareness to the framework and to see it implemented at Penn State.”
Tobin said she identifies her most meaningful accomplishment as the accessible syllabus templates she developed with Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Penn State IT consultant. The templates are designed to make it easier for faculty to make their syllabi more accessible to students with disabilities, or those who use a phone to do coursework.
“Definitely, I’ve enjoyed developing the accessible syllabus templates and sharing them with Penn State faculty and beyond. There’s a lot of interest in those templates here and elsewhere. In fact, Elizabeth and I have been invited to present them to the International Ally User Group,” Tobin said.
Like her Schreyer Institute faculty colleagues, Tobin is a professional educational developer dedicated to enhancing the work of higher education institutions by holistically supporting teaching at individual and organizational scales as they work to ensure and increase teaching quality. Educational developers in higher education come to the profession in a variety of ways.
Tobin began her journey as an educational developer while a doctoral student in English Literature at Duquesne University in the late 1990s. While completing her master’s degree at Indiana State University, she took a class on how to teach English composition. During her doctoral studies at Duquesne University, teaching assistants (TAs) and adjunct faculty discovered her previous pedagogical training and asked for her help in developing their own syllabi, lectures, and assignments. One of the first instructors at Duquesne to enhance courses with online content, Tobin was also among the first to use the university’s learning management system and became a resource for faculty colleagues. Her resource legacy lives on at Duquesne.
“Every once in a while, I meet a current Duquesne TA at a conference, and they tell me that my course materials are still in the departmental folder of sample course materials," said Tobin. "I hope somebody has updated them since then, though!”
Her work at Triton, like her unofficial consulting at Duquesne University, was not part of her original career plan, she explained.
“I had intended to be an English literature professor, and I still present on and write about the works of Charles Dickens and other Victorian authors,” Tobin said. “I became director of teaching and learning after serving as the Center for Teaching Excellence’s faculty-in-residence. My consulting career may be accidental in many ways, but I enjoy it.
“I get a lot of satisfaction out of helping individual faculty improve their teaching and assessment methods, especially when they report back to say that something worked for them and, more importantly, for their students.”
When she’s not working with colleagues at Penn State, Tobin enjoys reading historical fiction, playing video games, and traveling the globe with her spouse.
The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence is part of Penn State Undergraduate Education.