Olena Zhadko, Ph.D.

Dr. Olena Zhadko is an enthusiastic educator devoted to advancing strategy, development, and delivery of educational offerings and learning experiences to improve student access, opportunity, and success.

Zhadko has a PhD in Education from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, fifteen years of experience in higher education, including ten years of progressively responsible experience in teaching and learning, as well as the drive for developing and implementing high-quality, high-impact learning experiences (in-person and online). She has worked at three universities providing leadership and assistance in articulating and implementing effective teaching practices and infusing high-impact practices into curriculum development, delivery, and assessment. In her current role, she serves as the Director of Online Education at Lehman College, City University of New York, acting as the College’s senior administrator charged with strategic visioning and oversight of all facets of online and technology-enhanced instruction.

Dr. Zhadko is a sought-after speaker and presented at conferences such as the Online Learning Consortium, Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education, the World Conference on Online Learning, and the Teaching Professor. She has been serving as a core expert faculty since 2018 for an annual Academic Impressions conference “Online Programs: Building a Vision and Strategy – Developing a Comprehensive Retention Plan,” offering guidance to participants as they develop business plans for online programs, applying a more strategic lens to the way online programs operate to maximize their effectiveness.

Zhadko is particularly interested in creating equitable and accessible learning opportunities for all by means of online learning. She is the lead author of the book Best Practices in Designing Courses with Open Educational Resources (OER)(2020) with Routledge as part of the Best Practices in Online Teaching and Learning Series. She has contributed several chapters to the edited book, The Learner-Centered Instructional Designer: Purpose, Process, and Practicalities of Creating Online Courses in Higher Education (2020) (Quinn, J., ed.) with Stylus Publishing. Currently, she is working on another Routledge book titled, Best Practices for Mentoring in Online Programs: Supporting Faculty and Students in Higher Education with Dr. Susan Koas part of the Best Practices in Online Teaching and Learning Series, expected to be published in 2022.

Dr. Zhadko has been teaching in the Instructional Design/er Mastery Series and Certificate Program as well as individual professional development courses with the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), a lead organization in online learning, on a wide range of topics such as Strategies to Improve Retention; Exploring Learning Analytics; Designing Courses with a Multimodal Approach; Helping Faculty with New Course Development; Curating and Evaluating Resources for Faculty; Professional Foundations: Collaborating, Researching, and Networking; Course Quality Review; Exploring Open Educational Resources; Creating Rubrics; Managing Faculty Workload; Introduction to Research Methods for the Instructional Designer Community; and Introduction to Data Visualization.