Jennifer Spohrer

As the Coordinator for Academic Technology initiatives at Bryn Mawr College, Jennifer serves as a liaison between the Provost’s Office and Information Services, and is responsible for helping faculty incorporate technology into their teaching and research in meaningful ways.  In this capacity she also coordinates a multi-institutional study of Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts, initially funded by a Next Generation Learning Challenges Wave I grant. Jennifer began developing her technological skills and the ability to teach them to others while working as technical writer and (2-D) graphic designer in the computer game industry.  She co-founded a writing and design services company specializing in this area, called Incan Monkey God Studios, in Austin, Texas in 1997. Jennifer left the game industry to pursue a PhD in modern European history (with a minor field in the history of technology) at Columbia University, and has six years of experience teaching at Columbia and Bryn Mawr College. Teaching and pedagogy have always been key focuses for her, and she sees her current work as a process of helping faculty define their pedagogical challenges and goals, in order to identify technologies and techniques that would help them overcome those challenges or meet those goals. Elaborating on a phrase from Michael Wesch, her guiding principle as a teacher, a tech user, and a teacher of tech users, might be "automate the mundane; facilitate wonder."

• Blended Learning