I'm Marina McIsaac and I've been at Arizona State
University since 1980. Um I got my doctorate at
the University of Wisconsin Madison and was my career was
highly influenced by Ann Divanni, who was my mentor
and my major professor and she was the one who
originally took us all to accept and encouraged us all
to come and become a part of the professional organization
and she emphasized the importance of it to us.
So many of us are are still 80 CT members
. Um even though we've retired, I retired from
A. S. U. In 2000 and one
to continue some international work that I've been doing and
became more interested in doing that. And it was
tired, it was time for me to retire from
A. S. You. So I was happy
to do that. But I think that the importance
that an brought to our professional obligations was to become
members of A E C. T. And then
to utilize that network in our careers. And that
was very important to me. Then. Subsequently,
uh when I got a job at A. S
. U. Arizona State University, I did the
same thing with my students and now I'm pleased to
see that um at the where many of us are
members of the international division and my work detoured into
distance education as a subset of educational technology in 1988
as or 1987 as a result of a Fulbright that
I had to Turkey. But uh during that period
of having my own doctoral students and then as a
result of the international work that I did coming back
and then having students that we brought over to A
. S. U. From Turkey, from Portugal
from other countries. Uh as a result of the
work I was doing there now they are bringing their
students to act. And so I'm now seeing which
is a wonderful thing three generations of students. Um
and that's very nice because all of these students now
have become very, very uh international and although they
belong to other divisions, I think that they would
say that their home is in the international division.
So a a CT has been very important. Um
Not only I think, I think mentoring was probably
the most important part because it directed me to be
a part of a U. C. T.
And then threw me many other students. Uh And
I think that that's that's really been great um as
the career, the state an important part of my
career. But I think that one's career is Never
What one. Plans as I said, I became
very interested in distance education as a result, just
by chance of a Fulbright that I had to Turkey
and they're worked with on a daily university, which
was just beginning. They're sort of ascent to be
a mega university in terms of distance learning. They
now have over a million students registered and involved throughout
the country. It's a very large country and through
that work uh and encouraging participation at A. C
. T. Uh they came over and participated and
then through work that I've done uh in other countries
as a result of that the connection is strong.
Okay, can you cite something you might mention?
And can you cite other folks in the A.
C. T. To influence the way you think
about our work? Well, I think of course
that the whole organization since I first joined, which
was probably in about 1976 or so, there have
been a lot of shifts when I first came to
act. I think there were certain emphasis uh that
have changed over time. I mean I think it
helped to direct what I thought was important to learn
and to study. Although I sort of went off
in a bit of a different direction becoming a little
more international before we were really international. I mean
I think the international division and I think that's why
I felt that it was so important to be a
part of the international division because although we said we
were international, we were really weren't in the early
days. Uh and now we are more so I
I think that I've been influenced by of course the
leadership um and by people in particularly in research and
theory in R. T. D. Because I
was involved in that division for a long time,
was president of that some long time years ago and
that helped to sort of form my professional direction in
terms of I think it has two parts for me
, the professional part which is the the maybe the
content and then the socializing part which is also the
networking. And I think both of those things are
important in terms of specific people. It would be
on my colleagues. I mean I would say from
uh you know the international division people did Cornell,
Michael Stribling University of Wisconsin. Um uh I would
be hard for me to come up with a long
list of them. But I would say almost everyone
who's been active in the CT has influenced me in
one way or another, you've had a chance to
talk to your individual students and and some of the
students who are students of your students about A.
C. T. And why one should get involved
with it, assuming when you put this on the
web and assuming somebody serves to the spot where they
find you, what would you tell perspective or new
A. C. T. Members about the value
of probably our association? Well I think that uh
probably the networking is one of the most important parts
of it. And I was thinking as you were
asking the question that sort of I flashed back to
who were some of the important people that influenced me
early on and I would say frank Dwyer for one
, I was terrified of him as a doctoral student
. I came and I remember the first presentation I
gave and in those days maybe people took themselves more
seriously or I as a graduate student thought everybody else
was so impressive that I was afraid to say anything
. And I remember that those of us, alan
shoot was one for many years ago, randy kiting
, uh Michael streible and Rhonda Robinson, Who are
she? And Michael are still very involved. And
we would come and look at what was expected.
And I remember, I think frank did this just
out of pure joy of torturing doctoral students. And
he sat in the back of the room and I
remember presenting at my first conference in thinking, I
hope he doesn't ask me anything. And sure enough
, he did. And I was, I just
blanched. I was so terrified. And it was
one of those kind of questions that you ask when
you want to unnerve people. I don't even remember
what it was directly. But um, that certainly
convinced me that, uh, this was a serious
organization. So he influenced me a lot. Bill
Win in those days who was a wonderful, uh
, I've done a lot of work in educational technology
from sc and he was very influential, then he
ended up in Washington. Um So, to go
back to that, that was that that occurred to
me because I hadn't thought of it before. But
what what do I think for students and people that
I bring in especially now? Um I think particularly
about Hakan, Aydin and Hassan caliskan and the two
from from Turkey, who brought their students here now
, they have about eight students that they brought from
Turkey this year. So what would we say is
important? Well, I think right now the international
connections are very important. They wouldn't have been years
ago. Uh in addition, of course, the
basic research and theory, the basic instructional design concepts
that we've been carrying forward for years, I think
are very foundational two people coming into this field.
So I would say to them that uh they can
they can read the people here that they read about
, that's something very important. Um They can have
discussions with them, they can they can ask them
questions, they can they can disagree with them,
they can have very good intellectual exchanges in addition of
course with the networking connections which are so important to
people who come from overseas. Yeah, you've said
so much good stuff. I don't know where to
go other than other things that you think that should
be in here for the editor. Have a look
at and think of it fits in with the general
theme of history making and in a context. No
, I think that pretty well covers what I can
think of in terms of my relationship with the T
. I mean I think that I've been in it
long enough. I've seen a lot of changes and
I think there for the good. I really like
to see what it has become over the years through
hardships and through determination of staying an important organization for
the field and and still the most important. Much
of my work has been with ice um in the
last five years or more than that, maybe 10
years because of my international interests. And I was
really pleased that A E. C. T.
Has always been the organization that represents the United States
to the outside world and educational technology. And I
think that's really important and I'm glad to see that
we continue to do that and now we've become much
more international than we ever were before And I think
that's continuing and that will be a strength for us
. The first person that I met when I came
to 80 C. T. Was um liver and
miller and I think the first one I came to
was in Des Moines. It was someplace in Iowa
and I was that Wisconsin at the time and I
drove over and it was also a joint meeting so
I or the live came right after it and I
remember going to I. V. L. A
. And meeting liver and Miller and I saw her
then as a real um she knew everybody and she
introduced me to everybody. So she and lighted Cochran
was the other one who was you know very important
but I wasn't sure whether they were more important in
I. V. L. A. Because I
then became very involved with I. V. L
. A. And and the things that they were
doing and and uh so anyway but all of those
people and I think because and jim susie and roberts
Brandon and all those people mike moore were very important
and they crossed over between a U. C.
T. And IBl and which ones were more in
which one I don't know. But I I consider
the whole group of them part of my professional development
. And then you were asking about research and I
think that research uh for me came along as being
very important as a result of my interests. And
my interests were in online online teaching. Because I
had worked in Turkey helping to establish that the Urn
node that was in Izmir. And it was the
first year that internet orbit. Net in those days
was coming to Turkey. And then I worked because
I thought it was really important for people to have
online access and social sciences. Uh So my research
took that turn. I thought well what can we
do to make this more of a teaching tool?
And so I began to look at the social aspects
of it with, especially the doctoral students that I
had at that time in the what would they be
? Nineties, I guess? Late eighties, mid
, late eighties and nineties. And so we started
teaching online and used first class as our first um
platform. And because Blackboard didn't work for us and
a lot of other things, but looking at the
interactions between teachers and students in between students and students
, and just trying to examine what went on online
. So that was the research that interested me the
most. And that was also the research that interested
my students. And I would say that she too
has really carried that on a lot. So as
pompous recetas who is working over in Cyprus, but
many of them have taken different aspects of what they
look at as as a social impact and now cultural
, even more social and cultural impact of of uh
, the interactions on how people learn online. Okay
. Okay. No, I think that's it.
Thank you for inviting me.