Spotlight: Dr. Liu, Senior Instructional Designer at CIT

Dr. Juhong Christie Liu is a Senior Instructional Designer at the Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) in the JMU Libraries and Educational Technologies (LET). She designs and coordinates immersive faculty development programs for online and blended learning, develops orientations for student success in online learning environments, and co-designs courses with teachers from various disciplines. To address the multiple aspects of what creates a good online learning experience, she frequently collaborates with experts in other instructional technology fields when designing a program. More than 100 JMU faculty members have developed their online and blended courses after completing institutes that she has designed and facilitated. Her instructional design expertise is grounded in a deep understanding of theory and practice and is constantly honed through continued research and experience; she is driven by her passion to achieve the best use of technologies and tools for engaged learning.

Interested in knowing the potential of emerging technologies in teaching and learning, Dr. Liu focuses her research on engaging student learning with synchronous and asynchronous environments, collaborative teaching and learning with interoperability and connectivity, design and assessment of blended formal and informal learning, and implications of open education for instructional design. She has been a part of a collaborative research project with the JMU 4VA Initiatives to explore the redesign of the STEM learning space. She was a 2012-13 Madison Research Fellow of Community-Engaged Scholarship with the Center for Faculty Innovation (CFI) and a 2013-14 Assessment Fellow with the Center for Assessment and Research Studies (CARS). She is currently collaborating with research teams and faculty within and outside of JMU to study the design of student support programs for learning with online environments, LMS transition, teaching/learning with synchronous technologies, instructional design for STEM education, and instructional design for/with open educational resources (OER). She earned her Ph.D. in Instructional Design and Technology from Virginia Tech and came to JMU in 2007.

Dr. Liu has received recognition for her design projects related to training and student support at the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) annual conference and the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) annual conference. She is an AECT 2016 conference planner and serves as the 2015-17 Executive Board Member of Society of International Chinese in Educational Technology (SICET). Dr. Liu has published in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and an encyclopedia and has likewise served as a reviewer of journals, books, and conference proposals related to instructional design and technology. She presents regularly at international, national, and regional conferences. Dr. Liu has also served as a co-PI in several JMU, national, and international grant projects.