With great joy at my new role leading Partnerships for EesySoft, I wanted to share some of the personal journey that brought me here and how that affects my views on growing EesySoft’s partnerships.
Maybe it was growing up with Star Wars, but I wanted to be an astronaut since my earliest memories. Upon graduating from Stephen F. Austin High School, I joined the US Marine Corps Reserves and entered Stanford University with a plan to study physics, move on to the Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Class, accept a commission as an officer, and go on to be an astronaut.
"In 1996, we put up the first completely web based degree, a Master’s in Electrical Engineering."
Life has a funny way of intervening and while struggling at Stanford with what to study, I got a great student job working for the instructional TV network. This was before “lecture capture” so our 10 classrooms with multiple remote controlled cameras, microphones had one or two person control rooms where students were responsible for the live video production of the lecture.
For on-campus students, the videos were a nice way to watch your class lecture from your dorm room over the campus cable network. However, these course videos were meant for paying off campus students sponsored by their employers. The common student experience was asynchronous with a VHS tape mailed to the student who then returned their work for grading and feedback well after the on campus students. Furthermore, the pedagogy for most of these classes was not modified to take into account remote or asynchronous students. Then a funny thing happened...Netscape came out.
The web was already around before Netscape (who remembers the Mosaic browser?), but it really took off once Netscape came along and started extending HTML to do really cool things. One day at my student job, I proudly showed off my personal website for which I had just built a rollover menu. My boss looked at me slyly, mentioned we had received a grant to put some of these classes on the web, and asked if I’d like to work on the project. I jumped on it, and, in 1996, we put up the first completely web based degree, a Master’s in Electrical Engineering.
"Being drawn to Ed Tech, in the College of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, I then helped start the original Faculty Innovation Center"
Though I left Stanford with a degree in History, my professional career evolved from that student job and has always involved online technology. Being drawn to Ed Tech, in the College of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, I then helped start the original Faculty Innovation Center with the mission of never using technology for its own sake but rather always seeking innovative use of technology in support of learning outcomes.
After 7 wonderful years at UT working with early LMS’s, clickers, handhelds, helping faculty use technology to adopt PBL and Peer Instruction, and innovating with virtual and physical simulations, I left the university to join WebCT as a Solutions Engineer. I joined with a desire to travel and speak with instructors and instructional design staff about how to use our products to solve the challenges they faced, many of which I had faced with the faculty I had supported at UT.
Not quite six months after joining WebCT, Blackboard bought us. One could do an interesting podcast series about that time in Ed Tech...but long story short it was a hard time to be a WebCT fan. I was a WebCT fan, but coincidental with wanting to be an astronaut for as long as I can remember, I always wanted to live outside of the US for some period of my life. I chose to stay with Blackboard, fight for the interests of the customers, and follow my personal opportunities which brought me to living in Amsterdam in 2009.
"I met a Dutch Ed Tech company called EesySoft of which I quickly became a fan"
I learned so much at Blackboard. The company and people supported me with both the move to Amsterdam and great professional opportunities where I grew into the Director of Solutions Engineers outside the US and Canada. I was lucky to travel all over the world and learn a great deal more about business and education in different parts of the world. I ended up spending a total of 13 years with Blackboard and during that time, I met a Dutch Ed Tech company called EesySoft of which I quickly became a fan.
As someone who has implemented technology with faculty, I immediately appreciated the pragmatic approach to solving real world problems that EesySoft takes. It may sound simple but when the video-conference link goes down, you need a way to get people to stop clicking on it, stop submitting support requests, and start using the workaround you’ve set up for them. Being able to use EesySoft to overlay a message in the LMS to prevent the frustration of clicking on a bad link and enabling the immediate usage of the workaround makes everyone happy and productive. After I left Blackboard, I remained in touch with EesySoft and started working with the team here in 2019.
Do you want to know if the EesySoft EdTech Adoption Platform can measure or integrate with your LMS or EdTech tools? Get in touch with Dan, he wants to hear from you. You can email or book a meeting with him!
Now, my career has brought me to a new position leading EesySoft’s Partnerships. Ed Tech has never been more important than in 2020, but student and teacher experience has shown that creating good online learning takes experience, support, feedback, reflection on what works, and a variety of online tools and applications. We have heard clearly from our customers how helpful EesySoft has been during this time and also that we can be even more helpful if we integrate directly into that variety of tools and applications on which they rely. I am excited to do exactly that and expand our partnerships!
I look forward to this collaborative journey with our customers and partners, so please share feedback on the tools and partners you want to see partnered with EesySoft!
Do you want to know if the EesySoft EdTech Adoption Platform can measure or integrate with your LMS or EdTech tools? Get in touch with Dan, he wants to hear from you. You can email or book a meeting with him!
