Ashley Leslie - Director and Instructional Designer
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Ashley Leslie is Director and Instructional Designer in the DEC. Ashley received her M.S. in Curriculum and Instruction focusing on Instructional Technology from Virginia Tech and her B.S. in Education from Longwood University. Ashley also holds a Virginia Teaching License, is a Quality Matters Certified Online Facilitator, is a Quality Matters Peer Reviewer, holds several Quality Matters certifications, and is the Quality Matters Coordinator for Longwood University. As a member of the DEC, Ashley enjoys working with faculty to design courses and integrate technology into all learning modalities. Ashley enjoys teaching LOTI sessions, leading faculty professional development sessions, and supporting faculty and students with their Canvas courses. Her professional areas of interest are Quality Matters, course design, Panopto, Poll Everywhere and Turn It In.
Marcus Christian - Instructional Designer
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Marcus is an Instructional Designer who has worked in education since 2002. He has a wide variety of experiences with higher education. He shares the responsibility of teaching LOTI with Ashley Leslie and works with faculty through the Course Enhancement Program. He has been at Longwood University since 2018 feels like he is still learning about the community that is Longwood. As an Instructional Designer, he is happy to work with campus community members in a variety of ways from finding out the best way to integrate a technology for an assignment or class to completely reworking the structure of courses to better achieve your desired learning outcomes. His main goal is to work with instructors to help optimize instruction through technology. In addition to being an instructional designer, Marcus has taught many courses face-to-face and online since 2008. Marcus has an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction and enjoys spending time with his family. In his spare time, Marcus reads and is very active in his church.
Samantha Ellington - Solutions Engineer
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Samantha, most often called Sam, is one of two Solutions Engineers on the DEC team and a 2012 graduate of Longwood University. Sam is the lead Canvas Administrator and co-administrates various technologies like Respondus Lock Down Browser and Zoom, among others that are housed in the DEC. Like her peers, Sam is Quality Matters Certified. She particularly enjoys being presented with an "odd" or challenging problem and researching and testing to provide resolution.
Dean Boyle - Solutions Engineer
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Dean is a Solutions Engineer who has worked in the DEC since early 2019, after spending almost a decade teaching high school history and biology. His wife, Kristen, and he have two daughters and two dogs, and enjoy spending time in the great outdoors around Farmville. He received his bachelor’s degree from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and is currently working towards completing a graduate degree in Learning Design and Technology from JMU. He enjoys working directly with faculty and students (whether by phone, in person, or email) with issues related to Zoom, Canvas, and other academic technologies supported by the university. Recognizing that higher ed institutions are at the forefront of educational innovation, he hopes to continue scholarship in the ed tech field and contribute to the collective body of knowledge on how technology can enhance teaching and learning.
