Susan M. Zvacek's Bio

Dr. Susan M. Zvacek (CollegeTeachingCoach.com) is an independent consultant, speaker, and online teacher, focused on cultivating learning-centered teaching in higher education. Her disciplinary interests include online learning, engineering education, and instructional design. Susan’s speaking experience is diverse, with keynote addresses and workshops in the Czech Republic, Austria, Costa Rica, Estonia, Slovakia, Cyprus, England, Portugal, China, Germany, and throughout the United States. She has had two Fulbright appointments (Prague, CZ and Porto, PT) and served as an NSF reviewer for grants in graduate STEM education. Her 25+ years of experience in higher education included teaching, dissertation advising, and administration. She has been an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer and Distinguished Speaker for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Her publications are on topics such as course design, online learning, remote labs, and higher order thinking, including co-authoring Teaching and Learning at a Distance (currently in its 8th edition) and the original Blackboard for Dummies, as well as numerous articles, book chapters, and newsletter columns.

Innovative Technology and Higher Education: New Wine in Old Bottles?

When we consider the challenges posed by rapidly advancing technologies in the context of higher education, it would be wise to consider the warnings of storing “new wine in old bottles.” New wine (AI, virtual reality, internet of things, and technologies yet unknown) expands continuously and places pressure on the “old bottles” of traditional institutional structures, posing threats to the wine, the bottles, or both. This presentation will examine several inflection points of concern for higher education—pedagogy, security, access, academic integrity, and infrastructure—acknowledging the core values of scholarship, teaching, and research. Are our structures adaptable or must we water down the new wine of innovation? Is it even realistic to expect such flexibility? Let’s reason together as we consider the potential opportunities and risks that lie ahead.