FROM A DISTANCE
Kowalczyk honored for online teaching
Dr. Christine Kowalczyk, associate professor of marketing in East Carolina University’s College of Business, is the recipient of the 2021 Max Ray Joyner Award for Outstanding Teaching in Distance Education.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began and classes moved online at universities around the world, many professors were left scrambling to navigate new learning platforms and to tailor their courses for a virtual format. But at ECU, professors like Kowalczyk had already been doing the hard work behind the scenes, mastering Canvas and making ECU a leader in distance education.
Kowalczyk came to ECU in 2011 with a newly earned doctoral degree in hand to teach advertising classes. In the 10 years since, she has presented a variety of other classes, and she’s now teaching in the MBA program.
She said she works hard to innovate her online classes and to ensure they’re just as engaging and effective as a face-to-face experience. The same material is presented, just in different formats, she said. One difference is that the material is split into smaller segments.
“I’ll break it down into smaller parts, maybe 10-15 minutes,” she said. “I’ve learned that doing that is beneficial to the students and also to me.”
She provides stopping points within the lecture so students can watch supplemental videos, just as they would if she was providing a video example in an in-person class.
“I make sure that the lectures are digestible,” she said. “Teaching graduate students, a lot of them are working full time, have outside commitments, have families.”
For discussion boards and projects, her large classes are broken into smaller groups so she can interact with them more directly.
“The smaller discussion board groups have helped students be more engaged and helped me get to know them more,” she said.
Kowalczyk said she wants her students to keep their discussion board posts and replies short and to the point, an important lesson in the business world.
“We’ve got to be concise in our information, so it’s not just having them discuss topics, but also learning how to communicate, think critically and learn that you can say something (in fewer words) and be just as effective,” she said. “I have had students who’ve come back and told me that their bosses are that way. So they were ready, already understanding how to apply that.”
Never satisfied with “good enough,” Kowalczyk participated in the Office of Faculty Excellence’s BB&T Course Redesign Faculty Learning Community in 2019. The program centered on developing student leadership and rebuilding courses to foster student engagement.
“I was able to meet with other faculty throughout the university and learn how they present content,” she said. “Everyone learns differently. Some students will look at the PowerPoint slides and never even look at a video lecture. Other students will look at the video lectures and never look at any of the other content. Some will just read the book.”
The peer evaluations helped her better understand the different learning needs of her students and develop more engaging online teaching strategies.
Beyond lectures and tests, Kowalczyk said she always provides support material that the students can dive into if they’re particularly interested in a topic or it applies directly to their career.
“I want to provide them with tools,” she said. “I always want to make sure that they’re applying what we’re learning. … It’s not about the grades, it’s about what you learned and how you’re going to use it. And if you’re not going to use it, then I didn’t do my job because I want you to be able to apply it in your everyday life and in your career.”
Kowalczyk’s students appreciate the effort. “Dr. Kowalczyk had a way of making every student feel as if they were a priority and worked diligently to make sure that we were all successful in her course,” said one student.
Kowalczyk’s name will be added to a sculpture at Joyner Library honoring the recipients of the Max Ray Joyner Award.