Becky Benkert

Meet Our Team

Meet the Learning Technologies team members who make the tech magic happen.

Becky Benkert

Becky Benkert, Instructional Designer

About Becky:  Becky has worked in the field of distance education at College of DuPage since 2002 and is a certified instructional designer and a Course Quality Review OSCQR Trainer, both through the Online Learning Consortium. She holds a Master Online Teacher Certificate from the University of Illinois and the Illinois Online Network. She also holds an MS in Management from National-Louis University, a BA in English and Journalism from Northern Illinois University, and an AA from Joliet Junior College. When not supporting faculty, you might find Becky in a local cemetery, searching for genealogical information, or enchanting the local stray cat population.

What She Can Help You With: Online course structure and development, assessing students, aligning assessments with course objectives, and preparing to teach online or hybrid courses for the first time.

Becky Benkert

Gabriele Frahm, Instructional Designer

About Gabi: Gabriele Frahm is the newest Instructional Designer in the Learning Technologies department. She previously worked as an Instructional Designer at Erikson Institute in Chicago and has been working in Higher Education since 2011. In her free time she enjoys spending time with her cat named Fritz and German Shepherd named Dexter.

What She Can Help You With: Building engaging online and hybrid courses using different tools and technology, Blackboard support. 

 

Becky Benkert

Dan McCallum, Instructional Designer

About Dan: Dan has worked at the intersection of education and technology for over a decade. He started out in Columbia College Chicago’s film department, training students and faculty on video production equipment and skills. He has also freelanced in video production roles from cinematographer to video editor. At COD, Dan worked in the Library Media Lab where he helped faculty design and implement multimedia projects for their courses, investigated new technologies for student use, and designed workshops to build digital literacy skills.

When not at work, Dan enjoys spending time with his wife, watching anything Marvel related, crossword puzzles, and adding to his collection of Warhammer models.

What He Can Help You With: Helping develop and implement multimedia projects for courses, best practices for creating your own multimedia for online and hybrid courses, support for Blackboard and YuJa.

Becky Benkert

Christina Sabo, Web Content Editor

About Christina: Christina is a lifelong tech geek and has been building websites since HTML scrolling frames were cool. Today, she works as the web content editor for Learning Technologies, sending emails, writing posts for the LT blog, managing social media, designing graphics and assisting in updating the COD webpage. She’s always on the lookout for innovate ways to connect faculty with technology. Christina has more than a decade’s worth of experience working in higher education and technology digital marketing and holds a BA in Art History and Anthropology from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.  When she’s not at work, you’ll find her hanging out with her three kids, cute corgi, and husband.

What She Can Help You With: Social media, blogging tools like WordPress, updating department program pages (or anything on the COD website), questions about our newsletters, and sharing your tech projects with other faculty through the LT blog.

Becky Benkert

Tim Sweeney, Interim Learning Technologies Manager

About Tim: Tim has been College of DuPage since 2000 and has worked in various departments both on and off campus in that time. Currently, he works as an Instructional Technologist in Learning Technologies, assisting our faculty with creating and implementing interesting technology solutions in their courses. A COD alumnus, Tim earned his Associates degree here at the college before obtaining his BA in Communication, Media Studies from Northern Illinois University.

Outside of work, Tim can be found playing guitar, going to see live music, watching Twin Peaks and developing his culinary skills.

What He Can Help You With: Researching and/or creating interesting technology solutions and helping implement them in your course(s), troubleshooting Blackboard course tools and processes, linking integrated publisher content to your Blackboard course shell, managing your Blackboard Grade Center and creating accessible video content in your online course(s).

Becky Benkert

Lara Tompkins, Instructional Technologist

About Lara: Lara is a visually impaired instructional and creative technologist and de facto accessibility specialist. She graduated from the College and has worked here in both faculty and student-facing support roles for almost 11 years. Lara takes on a wide range of different tasks in her role, including facilitating technical pilots for Google Apps for Education, conducting usability and accessibility testing of Blackboard and other instructional technologies, consulting with faculty and staff, content remediation, technical writing and front end web development. When she’s not at work, you can catch her hanging with her three cats.

What She Can Help You With: All things Blackboard, accessibility issues, educational technology questions and much more. 

Becky Benkert

Learning Technologies

College of DuPage, BIC 3401

Phone: (630) 942-2490

Email: learningtech@cod.edu