What are some of the techniques and tools being used to engage students? A variety of instructors and technologists discuss their approaches to keeping students invested in their courses.
Primarily a listener and a builder, Renee understands that to deliver value, it is critical to identify stakeholder needs. A collaborator at heart, she has been very successful in team building designed to bridge gaps. Renee currently serves as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Program Growth and is the chief assistant to the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs in support of establishing and driving strategic priorities, providing oversight of distance and continuing education budgets, policies, and initiatives. She is responsible for building consensus and developing collaborative working relationships with a broad range of stakeholders, administrators, and academic departments to gather input, make recommendations, and provide support for growth initiatives.
Prior to joining UW-Stevens Point, Renee was responsible for enterprise learning technologies for UW System campuses and led a very successful systemwide digital transformation project that identified and synthesized emerging trends in technology with stakeholders’ needs for teaching and learning to design and build the UW System's Digital Learning Environment (DLE).
Renee was also with the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater for 11 years, first as a full-time Lecturer in Marketing teaching face-to-face, hybrid, and online/blended course formats beginning in 2003. In 2010, she joined the institution’s Central IT group as Director, and was responsible for campus learning and classroom technologies, as well as IT training.
She has presented extensively at national and international conferences including EDUCAUSE, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), Online Learning Consortium, and the IMS Global Learning Consortium on the topics of instructional technologies and teaching best practices. Renee has served on the IMS Global Institutional Leadership Board Steering Committee, the MHEC Academic Technology Advisory Group, the EDUCAUSE 2023 IT Issues Panel, and the 2024 EDUCAUSE Conference Planning Committee. She was recognized in 2009 with the UW-Whitewater Academic Staff Excellence Award for Instructional Staff for her contributions to students and to the community, in 2012 with an EDUCAUSE Jane N. Ryland Fellowship, in 2018 with the University of Wisconsin System Administration Eugene Craven award for her leadership and innovation in her work, in 2019 with IMS Global (now 1EdTech) 2019 LTI Advantage Contributors Institutional Leadership Award, and in 2023 with the University of Wisconsin System Administration President’s Team award for her team’s provision of the highest level of service.
Prior to her career in higher education, Renee enjoyed more than 15 years of corporate sector experience working for both public and private companies including Heidrick & Struggles, Arthur Andersen, and Arrow Companies. She earned an MBA with dual emphasis in marketing and technology & training, and a BA in French.
With its LMS contract set to expire, the University of Wisconsin System set out to reimagine its systemwide learning technology platform to better harness both technology and data in order to maximize student success.
LTI Advantage is the next generation of the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard, which was designed to enable plug-and-play integration of educational applications and tools within an institution’s digital learning environment.