Mary Klann Consulting

Digital Pedagogy and Instructional Design Consulting

My Background

I am an educator, facilitator, and consultant with over seven years of experience in teaching, faculty development, and digital pedagogy. I genuinely enjoy supporting faculty as they build confidence and think critically about integrating digital tools into their teaching.

I have held faculty development positions at UC San Diego and San Diego Miramar College where I have provided guidance to faculty in all disciplines in online teaching. I have partnered with the social annotation platform Hypothesis to offer expertise on incorporating collaborative annotation into both online and face-to-face classrooms. I have also presented on my pedagogy and ungrading practice through the AFT Guild’s Summer Institute, San Diego Miramar College, Cuyamaca College’s Anti-Racist and Equity Minded Community of Practice, San Diego Community College District’s Distance Education Week, Northeastern State University’s Community Health and Well-Being Collective Podcast, and the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. 

I was trained as a historian of United States history with a specialization in Native American history. I have always enjoyed using digital technology in my classrooms, and was certified to teach online through the San Diego Community College District prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, I began teaching Digital History at UC San Diego. Working with students in an online environment to understand digitized sources inspired me to think critically about sharing instructional design with students.

My four-word pedagogy statement is:

share learning, share joy

The two questions that guide my consulting practice are:

What does the university have that we want? What does the university have that we don’t want? 

(These questions are borrowed from the Interference Archive’s 2018-2019 exhibit, “Free Education!” Curated by Jakob Jakobsen and Interference Archive.) 

I describe my pedagogy as a critical adjunct pedagogy—to me, this means sharing joy and learning with students while actively disrupting academia’s hierarchies and the myth of meritocracy.

Note: I am an adjunct who respects the work and care adjuncts put into their teaching. If you’d benefit from my services but lack the funds to pay full price or do not have access to institutional funding, please inquire about my sliding scale for adjuncts. If you’d like to support your contingent colleagues, please consider making a donation so I can offer as many services to adjuncts for as little as possible!

Work With Me

My services may be right for you if…

You are overwhelmed with your institution’s shift to a new Learning Management System (LMS), and would benefit from extra support to make your course site match your pedagogical values and look how you want it to look.

You feel you’d benefit from a patient guide and want to build more confidence with digital pedagogical tools to support your students better.

You’d like to improve upon existing skills, are thinking of changing up your approach to digital tools, or haven’t changed your course’s digital tools since COVID.

You have to use an LMS as an institutional requirement but you strongly dislike the concept of “managing” learning, or you’re curious about ungrading but don’t know how it could work in a university that requires final grades to be submitted.

You want to learn more about ed tech’s history and how you can mindfully and thoughtfully improve your pedagogy while keeping in mind student privacy and learning goals, and retaining your progressive pedagogical philosophy.

You’re a department or group at a university who would like practical tips and understanding of a particular digital tool.

Services for Individuals

Hourly one-on-one assistance for setting up courses with digital tools and/or support with your LMS (i.e. Canvas, Blackboard, Sakai). We will work on building confidence and ease for interacting with students in digital space, tying the tools you use to your pedagogy, and learning how and what parts of the LMS work for you.

Consulting and planning for pedagogical changes, especially relating to digital tools. If you’re trying something completely new and want to think it through and/or test it out with an engaged and friendly participant, this is for you!

Advising on ungrading and how to implement ungrading into your LMS. If you’re just starting ungrading and want to discuss ideas, or if you’re an experienced ungrader who wants help working out an issue, I can help you.

Instructional design and creation of course sites, including formatting, accessibility checking, uploading and organizing files and materials. This service is offered only as an add-on to hourly one-on-one assistance and/or pedagogy consulting.

Services for Groups

Lectures/workshops offering historically contextualized introductions to educational technology and its possibilities and drawbacks. 

Small group sessions on specific tools or practices.

Learn more or inquire about rates by emailing me at mary [dot] klann [at] gmail [dot] com.