Online Faculty Development is here for you. We provide opportunities and training to help you succeed and achieve excellence in online teaching and learning throughout your career. Our team can also work with you to create a fulfilling and meaningful professional development action plan to meet your goals and desired outcomes.
Contact Us
World Campus Online Faculty Development
225 Outreach Building
University Park, PA 16802
ofd@psu.edu
Our Team
Matt Dingo’s diverse career is unified by a curiosity about the elements of teaching and design that contribute to learner success. During his undergraduate studies in composition and rhetoric at The Ohio State University, he ran a tutoring program for under-resourced youth. This experience formed the basis for his honors thesis, The Subject Teacher. After graduating with honors in liberal arts and distinction in English, Matt joined the Peace Corps, where he taught English in Poland.
Starting in 2000, Matt focused on performing and teaching music. During this time, he began his career in higher education as the founder of the guitar program at the University of Minnesota, Morris. In 2013, he received a Master of Education from James Madison University, where he studied online, distributed networked music performance and pedagogy. After graduating, Matt taught in James Madison’s Educational Media program until 2018.
Matt started his first instructional design position in higher education at Ohio University in 2014. There, he designed the online version of one of the university’s most popular courses, The History of Rock, and launched the Financial Economics and Public Administration master’s programs. In 2018, Matt joined the leadership development firm DDI. His leadership courses have been translated into seven languages and are facilitated in corporate environments worldwide.
In 2020, Matt followed his passion for higher education, joining Penn State World Campus to develop non-credit educational development courses that help instructors become better online teachers and students become more successful online learners.
Cathy Shreckengast started her Penn State career in the College of Agricultural Sciences in 2007 and joined World Campus in 2009. In August 2013, she became a part of the Faculty Development team, where she provides support for the research, design, and implementation of the faculty training, onboarding/mentoring, scholarly life initiatives, and unit capacity expansion that are part of the functions of World Campus Faculty Development. She earned her associate degree in business administration/accounting from South Hills School of Business and Technology.
Crystal Donlan is the non-credit instructional designer for World Campus Learning Design at Penn State. She holds an M.Ed. in Learning, Design, and Technology and is currently a doctoral candidate and academic instructor in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education. With more than 20 years of experience as a learning scientist and educator, Crystal has taught across K–12, correctional, community-based, and higher education settings.
In 2021, she introduced her original “Mindful Scaffolding” framework at the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) conference and continues to present nationally and institutionally on designing learner-centered environments grounded in compassionate integrity, universal design, and equitable opportunity. Crystal is a certified secondary English educator, a National Geographic Certified Educator, and a Quality Matters–certified higher education peer reviewer and institutional coordinator.
Her work focuses on modern literacies — including information, digital, and media literacy — and the integration of digital badges and micro-credentials into self-paced and online learning environments. Her research explores how thoughtfully scaffolded digital learning experiences influence learner competence, transactional distance, and workforce readiness. Her interest in distance education was further shaped by her lived experience navigating autoimmune disease, deepening her commitment to flexible and inclusive learning design. Crystal is committed to supporting faculty in creating meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable online learning experiences.